CHAPTER 14: Trends in Cyclotide Research

Cyclotides are bioactive peptides from plants that have exceptional stability owing to their cyclic peptide backbone and knotted arrangement of three conserved disulfide bonds. This peptide family was first defined in 1999, although a few individual members had been identified in independent studies in earlier decades in the course of pharmaceutical screening or ethnobotanical studies. The structures, bioactivities and applications of cyclotides have been extensively reviewed elsewhere. This chapter instead provides an analysis of the trends in the cyclotide literature over the last three decades and aims to be a useful resource for following the development of the cyclotide field and for introducing new researchers to the complete literature of the field.