Acremonol and acremodiol, new fungal bislactones.

In the course of our continuing search for new fungal metabolites with antibacterial properties we isolated new bislactones, acremonol (1) and acremodiol (2) (Fig. 1). In this paper we describe the isolation and structural elucidation of 1 and 2 by ESI-MS, FAB-MS and NMR spectroscopy. The new bislactones 1 and 2 possess structures related to grahamimycin1) and the colletodiol family2,3). For the latter compounds chemical synthesis was reported4). Biosynthetic studies5) revealed that these compounds are polyketides. The producer strain of 1 and 2 was isolated from a soil sample of the Bermuda Islands as a taxonomically unidentified Acremonium-like anamorphic fungus. It forms mycelial colonies colored pale pink to pale brown. The