Fluorescence in my lab

Hi,

Mi name is Nicole, I am Chemistry teacher and researcher at the University of Zulia. I also am a graduated Cook and I play piano, but food and music posts will come later...
It is my first post on this page, and I thought, well maybe I should start with something really interesting, and I hope you guys like it.

Here is the thing, a year ago, I did my Master in Pure Chemistry and of course, as a researcher I had to do an investigation about a topic. So,here is my story about it:

I work at the Natural Product researchers team at the same University I teach (University of Zulia) with my boss and friend the Dr. José Ortega. At the lab, we do many interesting things, such as extracting plant material from leaves, seeds, flowers followed by an investigation about those extracts (chemically and biolgically). What do we investigate? well, generally we select a plant with medicinal impact on populations, as they are used in potions, beverages, cataplasms, to heal deseases or to eliminate pain, and we practically split that plant material in pieces (called fractions) with different solvents, to study their composition and find those called "Active metabolites". Those, are produced in the secondary metabolism in plants, and they use them as defense agents against deseases. Yes, plants are really amazing! They create their own medicines to defend themselves! amazing, right?

So, we heard about a plant called here in my country "nomeolvides" (translate: don't forget me), and its scientific name is Cordia sebestena. I show you a picture so you can have an idea about this beautiful tree:

Well, this plant is used to cure wounds, and it has other pharmacological benefits, so we selected the leaves, and studied them. What did we do? Here the abstract of my Master's work

In this investigation an hydroalcoholic crude extract (HCE) was obtained by cold maceration with isopropanol of the leaves of Cordia sebestena (yield of 6,15%), which was then fractionated using solvents in crescent grade of polarity, to obtain the petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and methanol fractions. The polar fraction was submitted to another extraction procedure, to obtain three subfractions. The crude extract and its fractions where then characterized using thin layer cromatography and different revealing agents, observing the presence of coumarins, flavonoids and phenolic acids. One of them, is the star on this show, and guess what else?! those compounds, are fluorescent!

Isn't this really amazing?!! Even making the assay in test tubes, there was a blue fluorescence at 366nm to see, look:

Test tubes in A, are those with an alcoholic solution of the fraction of interest, and in frame B, there are under UV light, so you can see the light blue fluorescence! But, why does this happens? As you know, fluorescence is an emission of electromagnetic radiation, usually visible light, caused by excitation of atoms in a material. In those extracts we studied, and characterized, there are chemical metabolites from that plant, that show this property in solution, under UV light. In another post, I will reveal to you all, which compound was the star on this show! and for those who love chemistry, I can show you the chemical structure too.

I also have to say, that "fluorescence in my lab", happened after a whole year of hard work with this plant extracts. Natural Product Chemistry is really interesting, but also a time demanding chemistry. To obtain those results, we had to do a lot of assays, a lot of "we wasted our time thoughts", to come to this final result. But it was worth, we are trying to publish now our work on a Natural Product site and this is why I cannot reveal all results right now.
So dear readers, I hope you lilked it, and see you soon for more amazing stories!