ADVANCES IN CHEMICAL STUDIES ON LOW-MOLECULAR-WEIGHT METABOLITES OF MARINE FUNGI

The world oceans represent a resource of huge dimension, but their mic robial diversity is still poorly understood. The chemistry of marine f ungi was even a widely neglected part of natural product chemistry unt il recently. But symbiotic and epibiotic coexistence of fungi with hig her forms of life, e.g. with sponges, forming highly specialised commu nities gave rise to an increasing interest in their secondary metaboli sm. More than 100 metabolites from marine fungi are known now, many of them showing fascinating structures or remarkable biological activiti es. This review gives a comprehensive summary of most structures and d iscusses their origin and properties.