Marine isonitriles represent the largest group of natural products carrying the remarkable isocyanide moiety. Together with marine isothiocyanates and formamides, which originate from the same biosynthetic pathways, they offer diverse biological activities and in spite of their exotic nature they may constitute potential lead structures for pharmaceutical development. Among other biological act...

The ocean covers about 70% of the earth surface providing a diverse living environment for invertebrates [1]. Therefore, marine natural products will play a major role in drug discovery in the future. The work on marine natural products started 59 years ago when Bergman discovered the novel bioactive Arabino-nucleoside from marine sponge Cryptotethya crypta [2]. This discovery encouraged natura...

The marine environment is known as a rich source of chemical structures with numerous beneficial health effects. Among marine organisms, marine algae have been identified as an under-exploited plant resource, although they have long been recognized as valuable sources of structurally diverse bioactive compounds. Presently, several lines of studies have provided insight into biological activitie...

BACKGROUND Marine organisms produce many novel compounds with useful biological activity, but are currently underexploited. Considerable research has been invested in the study of compounds from marine bacteria, and several groups have now recognised that marine fungi also produce an interesting range of compounds. During product discovery, these compounds are often produced only in non-agitate...

petroleum hydrocarbons are important energy resources used by industry and in our daily life, whose production contributes highly to environmental pollution. to control such risk, bioremediation constitutes an environmentally friendly alternative technology that has been established and applied. it constitutes the primary mechanism for the elimination of hydrocarbons from contaminated sites by ...

During the last 10 years marine organisms have provided a large number of new natural products. Interesting compounds have mainly been derived from macroorganisms such as sponges, ascidians, corals and bryozoans. The number of secondary metabolites from marine microorganisms is smaller, but rapidly increasing. Because of the enormous difficulties involved in harvesting products from marine anim...

Marine organisms are rich source of structurally new and biologically active metabolites. There have been many reports of macro algae-derived compounds that possess a broad range of biological functions, such as antibiotic, antiviral, antioxidant, antiinflammatory, cytotoxic, and antimitotic activities. Bioactive components have been revealed in many marine algae. Marine algal compounds are pre...

Oceanic dissolved organic matter (DOM) is an assemblage of reduced carbon compounds, which results from biotic and abiotic processes. The biotic processes consist in either release or uptake of specific molecules by marine organisms. Heterotrophic bacteria have been mostly considered to influence the DOM composition by preferential uptake of certain compounds. However, they also secrete a varie...

The oceans are a source of a large group of structurally unique natural products that are mainly found in invertebrates such as sponges, tunicates, bryozoans, and molluscs. It is interesting to note that the majority of marine compounds currently in clinical trials or under preclinical evaluation are produced by these species rather than as secondary metabolites by marine algae. Through the com...