Structurally Diverse Duclauxins from a Coral-Derived <i>Talaromyces</i> sp. and Insight into Determining the Configuration at C‑1 of Heptacyclic Duclauxins by ¹H NMR

A chemical investigation of the coral-derived fungus Talaromyces sp. TJ403-AL05 led to the isolation of 18 duclauxin analogues (1–18), 14 of which, taladuxins A–N (1–14), are new and consist of the first example of duclauxin fused with one 1,6-dioxaspiro[4.5]decan-2-one moiety (1), as well as its biosynthetic product (2), and 12 6/6/6/5/6/6/6 heptacyclic derivatives (3–14). Comprehensive spectroscopic analyses, electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculations, DP4+ probability analyses, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) calculations were employed to characterize their structures and revise the published structure of verruculosin B. An efficient 1H NMR method was established to discriminate 1R and 1S configurations at C-1 of 6/6/6/5/6/6/6 heptacyclic duclauxins according to chemical shift differences of diastereotopic methylene H2-11 or H2-12 (ΔδH‑11 or ΔδH‑12). Compounds 4, 7–8, 13–15, and 18 exhibited moderate inhibition of Arabidopsis thaliana 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (AtHPPD), with IC50 values ranging from 17.1 to 71.3 μM.