Natural Products From Marine Fungi

Marine fungal natural products are well-known as the “blue gold,” as they have been promising leads for drug discovery and development. Even though marine fungi are less explored in comparison to their terrestrial counterparts, a number of useful hits have been obtained from a drug discovery perspective. Topics discussed in this book include a review on novel natural products from extremophilic fungi, secondary metabolites from deep-sea fungi; natural products from fungi in a symbiotic relationship with marine macro-organisms; and bioactive metabolites from sediment-derived fungi. Marine biologists, chemists, and pharmacologists will find the book a good reference material. The book covers various bioactive marine fungal natural products, and it is hoped that this book aids scientists explore fungal chemical diversity.

Marine fungal natural products are well-known as the “blue gold,” as they have been promising leads for drug discovery and development. Even though marine fungi are less explored in comparison to their terrestrial counterparts, a number of useful hits have been obtained from a drug discovery perspective. Topics discussed in this book include a review on novel natural products from extremophilic fungi, secondary metabolites from deep-sea fungi; natural products from fungi in a symbiotic relationship with marine macro-organisms; and bioactive metabolites from sediment-derived fungi. Marine biologists, chemists, and pharmacologists will find the book a good reference material. The book covers various bioactive marine fungal natural products, and it is hoped that this book aids scientists explore fungal chemical diversity.

A trillion different microbial species have been evolving for some 3.5 billion years, producing ever more complex active secondary metabolites. The sea is a cauldron of a great diversity of useful and valuable compounds. This Special Issue focused on studies of marine microbe natural products for discovering compounds useful to humankind. Papers were collected that provide up-to-date information regarding the characterization of marine microbes’ metabolic diversity and the evaluation of the therapeutic potential of marine microbes’ metabolites. Most of the articles in this book deal with marine fungi, biological and chemical diversity, and their active metabolites. This may be a sign that marine fungi have been under studied to date and are perceived by many researchers as an important source of discovery in this field. A best practices guide for the isolation of marine fungi from different matrixes and their conservation is also presented. The comparison of the phylogenetic and metabolomic profiles of microalgae from different lineages provides novel insights into the potential of chemotaxonomy in marine phytoplankton, showing a good overlap of phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic signals.

Bioactive Marine Natural Products is the first book available that covers all aspects of bioactive marine natural products. It fills the void in the literature for bioactive marine natural products. The book covers various aspects of marine natural products and it is hoped that all the major classes of bioactive compounds are included. Different classes of marine organisms and the separation and isolation techniques are discussed. The chemistry and biology of marine toxins, peptides, alkaloids, nucleosides and prostanoids are discussed in detail. Biological, toxicological and clinical evaluations are also dealt with to ensure that the book may be adopted at any stage by any practicing organic chemist or biologist, working in academia or in R and D divisions of pharmaceutical companies. Each chapter in the book includes an abstract to highlight the major points discussed in the text and concluding remarks are given. References to books, monographs, review articles and original papers are provided at the end of each chapter.

Marine fungi play a major role in marine and mangrove ecosystems. Understanding how higher fungi with their spectrum of cellulolytic and ligninolytic enzymes degrade wood tissue, while labyrinthuloids and thraustochytrids further contribute to the dissolved organic matter entering the open ocean is essential to marine ecology. This work provides an overview of marine fungi including morphology and ultrastructure, phylogeny, biogeography and biodiversity. Increasingly, biotechnology is also turning to these organisms to develop new bioactive compounds and to address problems such as decomposition of materials in the ocean and bioremediation of oil spills. These potential applications of marine fungi are also treated. In the light of massive marine oil spills in the past years, the importance of understanding marine fungi and their role in the food chain cannot be underestimated.

Natural products continue to serve as sources for the development of new medicines. There is currently a revival of interest in the discovery of bioactive compounds with new chemical structures from natural sources, largely due to the fact that synthetic libraries have not yielded the expected number of developmental candidates in the pharmaceutical industry during the last decade. In addition, the emergence of clinically relevant pathogens that are becoming increasingly resistant to currently used medicines strengthens the notion that natural product research is urgently required. Considering the fact that almost 10% of bioactive compounds are of microbial origin, and that marine microorganisms are relatively poorly studied compared to their terrestrial relatives, marine microorganisms are regarded as the most potential-laden resource for drug discovery.

The first chapter in volume 111 summarizes research on the sesterterpenoids, which are known as a relatively small group of natural products. However, they express a variety of simple to complicated chemical structures. This chapter focuses on the chemical structures of sesterterpenoids and how their structures are synthesized in Nature. The second chapter is devoted to marine-derived fungi, which play an important role in the search for structurally unique secondary metabolites, some of which show promising pharmacological activities that make them useful leads for drug discovery. Marine natural product research in China in general has made enormous progress in the last two decades as described in this chapter on fungal metabolites. This contribution covers 613 new natural products reported from 2001 to 2017 from marine-derived fungi obtained from algae, sponges, corals, and other marine organisms from Chinese waters.