이정훈 (강원대학교)

이지호 (강원대학교)

이정훈 (강원대학교)

송민호 (강원대학교)

최은송 (강원대학교)

유지우 (건국대학교)

이지호 (강원대학교)

In response to the growing incidence of herbicide resistant weeds, discovering new bioactive compounds is essential. Natural products with known herbicidal activity, and especially their structural analogues, offer an efficient starting point for lead identification. In this study, we synthesized structural analogues of the allelochemical sorgoleone and confirmed their herbicidal activity. Moreover, we elucidated the active compounds’ mode of actions using metabolomics and molecular docking.

 Among the analogues tested, compounds 1g (with an 18 carbon alkyl chain) and 1h (with an ethylbenzene substituent) showed the strongest inhibition of Lactuca sativa growth. We then performed targeted metabolomic profiling by GC MS/MS on Lactuca sativa treated with 1g or 1h. Metabolite changes implicated two known sorgoleone mode of actions: photosystem II (PSII) electron transport and 4 hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD). Both 1g and 1h disrupted PSII electron transports, while only 1g also inhibited HPPD related metabolism. To strengthen these findings, we conducted molecular docking of each analogue against both target proteins. The docking results for 1g and 1h mirrored the metabolomic data, confirming PSII inhibition by both compounds and HPPD inhibition by 1g.