Natural polyphenols as compounds with biological activity

Plants produce thousands of phenolic and polyphenolic compounds as secondary metabolites.They are essential to the physiology of plants being involved in diverse functions such as lignification and structure, pigmentation, pollination, allelopathy, pathogen and predator resistance and growth.Approximately 8000 have been described to date, major classes being flavonoids, flavones, flavan-3ols, flavanones and anthocyanins.They can be isolated from biomass waste and cultivated and spontaneous plants by biorefining and used for their biological properties in different fields.In this paper some examples of uses such as: modulation agents of carbohydrates metabolism in diabetes and alcoholic fermentation, agents for regulation of physiological process in plants (germination, plant propagation and cultivation, tissue culture, bioremediation), modulation agents of metabolic processes in microorganisms (antifungal and antibacterial properties, antioxidants), models to study the influence of stress factors (hydrogen peroxide oxidation and UV irradiation and life span regulation), and carbon sources as substrates in medium cultivation of microorganisms, are presented.