Natural products have long been used as pharmaceutical actives for the treatment of diseases. More recently, natural products with the ability to self-assemble to form soft material-gels, i.e. natural product gelators (NPGs), were discovered. This subverts our traditional insight into natural products as drugs and drives us to elucidate how NPGs form gels. Here, we interpret "why gel" from the perspective of solvents based on the basic theory of thermodynamics for liquids, and then propose the hypothesis of solvent-induced gel formation in combination with the NPGs with polycyclic structures. This hypothesis provides a complete explanation of how the gelator and solvent play a role in the overall gel formation and helps us to more easily understand the gelation.

中文翻译：

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具有多环结构的天然产物胶凝剂的溶剂诱导凝胶形成假说。

长期以来，天然产物一直用作治疗疾病的药物活性成分。最近，发现了具有自组装能力以形成软质材料凝胶的天然产品，即天然产品胶凝剂（NPG）。这颠覆了我们对天然产物作为药物的传统见解，并促使我们阐明了NPG是如何形成凝胶的。在此，我们基于液体热力学的基本理论，从溶剂的角度解释“为什么凝胶”，然后提出结合多环结构NPG的溶剂诱导凝胶形成的假说。该假设为胶凝剂和溶剂如何在整个凝胶形成过程中发挥作用提供了完整的解释，并有助于我们更轻松地理解胶凝作用。