First of all, absolute and sincere thanks go to Allah, who gave me the grace to enjoy sound health, protection and guidance throughout my studies. To you all honour and glory. All my greatest gratitude and deepest appreciation to the Citadel Capital Foundation for funding this project, without their funding this work would not have been possible. I wish to express my deepest gratefulness to my supervisor Prof. Gray, his tremendous knowledge in NMR gave me the true essence of this technique; his

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... father like affection encouraged me to carry on with my work. I am also very grateful to Dr. Val Ferro for being a secondary supervisor; her support and generosity were invaluable attributes to my overall PhD experience. Her invaluable instructions and advice helped me greatly to improve my research writing ability. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Ann Simpson for her kind supervision. I am also very thankful to Dr. Robert Drummond for supervising part of my research his methodological approach helped me greatly to improve my research ability and he was always happy to give me his advice and clarification whenever necessary. Especial thanks to Dr. Edward Rowan for offering me the opportunity to work in his lab and for his help. I am very thankful to Dr. RuAn for her help with NMR as well as for her availability, advice and support. My endless thanks are extended to Dr. John Igoli (my best friend), who understood the pressure I was under and offered me his kind support and his valuable time throughout the period of my study and helped me to finish my work smoothly. I am indebted to Dr Jamil Shilpi for his help during my first year and I am very pleased to have shared this experience with him and all the postgraduate students in the Natural Product Research group from whom I have learned a lot, Jamal, Nouri, Andrea, Khanittha, LayAn, Giacomo, Ciarra, and Ahmed. Especial thanks to Ruby, Tome and Mohamed Sabar for their help and support. I would like to thank Carole Clements from SIDR for her help in some of the antioxidant work. I am also obliged to Alex and Craig for their kind help in running MS and LC-MS experiments. I would further like to thank Martin and Mark for their contribution during the evaluation of the immunomodulatory properties. I acknowledge the University of Strathclyde technical and administrative staff for their kind assistance. Thanks to my friends Ebtihaj, Azra, Adisa, Samar, Mirfate, Ayah and Aminah whose friendly help made my life easy and comfortable in Glasgow. I want to give credit to my friend whom special people in my life for their moral support and their company throughout my life and their assistance: Hoda, Haitham, Kassem, Ekramy, Amal, Hana and Samar. Special thanks to Adal and Anter, their communication and encouragement throughout my studies has been my source of strength. I am grateful to my colleagues and seniors at the unit of Environmental Studies and Development, Wadi Allaqi Biosphere reserve in Aswan, Saint Catherine and Siwa. Special thanks go out to Dr. Magdi Radi, his guidance, advice and help for suggesting the topics of this research led to the final successful completion of this work. I would like to express special thanks to all the Bedouin people who generously gave me their time and shared their knowledge over the course of this study and for their help in collecting plant materials. Finally, my deepest gratitude and sincere deep thanks goes to my parents, brothers, sisters and family whose unconditional and amazing love and support made everything possible. My especial thanks are to my brother Mohamed for his moral support and tolerating the pressure with me. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to all those who helped me in one way or another in making my success pleasurable.