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Manuel AregullinProspecting for Botanical GoldBy Nancy EatonDr. Manuel Aregullin examines a species of Araucariaceae, or Norfolk Island Pine, at the Cornell University Conservatory. Scientists believe that bees use plants, including this one, to produce propolis, a substance responsible for neutralizing pathogens in beehives.For countless centuries, the shamans and medicine men of indigenous cultures used word of mouth to pass along knowledge of native plant material that held the power to heal or cure.Once dismissed as primitive and unscientific, the native healers in the remaining tribes of the world are now highly respected for what they know about medicinal plants and their uses. Some are even joining forces with botanists and chemists in the search for new drugs.”I am a chemical prospector,” says Manuel Aregullin, senior research associate, laboratory director, and faculty member at Cornell University. “I take the students through that process by which we can prospect in nature for promising new chemicals that could lead to the discovery or development of new pharmaceuticals. If one is looking for an antibiotic or an anti-viral, or even things as sophisticated as anti-cancer, there are simple preliminary ways in which one can assess if particular chemistry has potential. And so that is what I teach. A plant is brought to the laboratory and extracted for its chemistry, and then that chemistry is tested in various biological settings.”“I am a chemical prospector. I take the students through that process by which we can prospect in nature for promising new chemicals that could lead to the discovery or development of new pharmaceuticals.”Dr. Aregullin’s background is in natural products chemistry — his Ph.D. involves both chemistry and chemical biology. In addition to conducting research through the department of molecular biology and genetics, he also teaches senior-level undergraduates, graduate, and post-doctoral students through the department of plant biology.A ChemDraw illustration of Artemisinin, a terpene Dr. Aregullin has studied, showing its theoretical 13C-NMR spectrum as predicted by ChemDraw. The chemical is isolated from the annual herb Artemisia annua (Asteraceae) and is effective against drug-resistant strains of the malarial parasite Plasmodium.ChemDraw: an Old FavoriteWhether he’s in the laboratory or in the classroom, Dr. Aregullin relies on Macintosh computers and applications such as CambridgeSoft’s ChemDraw to help streamline his workflow. Both Macs and ChemDraw have been with Dr. Aregullin ever since he toiled as a graduate student back in the late 1980s, working on a Mac IIci. “Those Macs were real workhorses,” says Dr. Aregullin. “And the very early versions of ChemDraw were on one or two diskettes,” he adds with a laugh. “I’ve kept all the different versions that have been out there since then.”ChemDraw started out as an application for drawing chemical structures. In both teaching and in documenting his research, Dr. Aregullin constantly needs to draw biochemical compounds in their highly complex structural forms, whether he includes them in manuscripts or presentations or projects them on a screen in a lecture hall. In the past, says Dr. Aregullin, scientists and instructors had to draw these compounds by hand using pen and ink on paper or chalk them out on blackboards — both requiring considerable time and effort because of the complexity of the drawings.A Consistent User InterfaceBut with ChemDraw, Dr. Aregullin uses the application’s drawing palettes to quickly diagram even the most complex molecules and compounds. He also appreciates that, while ChemDraw has become far more powerful over the years, its well-designed user interface has remained consistent from version to version. “You just install it and you start using it right away because it has just expanded its capabilities but not changed so drastically that you have to learn everything again,” he says. “The palette of tools hasn’t changed much, but within each tool of the palette, you can then go into different levels of sub-tools. Despite the fact that it’s gotten so sophisticated, the familiarity has not gone away.”Dr. Aregullin finds it easy to move quickly between the palette tools to draw a molecular compound in two dimensions. “It’s so ergonomic for generating presentation slides that are loaded with chemical structures for various purposes, whether I’m showing the chemical profile of a particular plant species or I want to compare various molecules and highlight featured differences,” he says. “The ease with which I can draw the structures is just phenomenal. And that’s what I use it for the most — for illustration purposes.”