Issue 1 of Natural Product Reports is now available online. This first issue of 2009 heralds the beginning of monthly publication for NPR. From now we will bring you twelve issues each year containing reviews on the latest natural products research. 

This issue's Highlight, by Jared Shaw (University of California, Davis, US), describes synthetic methods which have enabled both natural product synthesis and diversity oriented synthesis (DOS). Shaw shows that in many cases the end products of DOS bear little functional resemblance to the natural products made by the same strategies. 

Cover image for this issue

Featured on the front cover (above) is a review by Zoe Wilson and Margaret Brimble (University of Auckland, New Zealand) on extremophiles, organisms which tolerate or favour extreme growth conditions such as extreme temperature, pressure or pH.