Marine bioprospecting - Trawling for treasure and pleasure

This Microreview seeks to highlight the molecular diversity present in mari ne organisms, and illustrate by example some of the challenges encountered in exploring this resource. Marine natural products exhibit an impressive a rray of structural motifs, many of which are derived from biosynthetic path ways that are uniquely marine, Most importantly some marine metabolites pos sess noteworthy biological activities, activities that have potential appli cation outside marine ecosystems, such as antibiotics, antiparasitics, anti cancer agents etc... The isolation, spectroscopic characterisation and assi gnment of stereostructures to these unusual metabolites is both challenging and rewarding. Examples featured in this Microreview follow a common theme in that they are all recent accounts of the isolation of natural products from Australian marine sponges, carried out in the laboratories of the auth or. In addition to presenting brief comments on specific structure elucidat ion strategies, an effort is made to emphasize techniques for solving stere ochemical issues, as well as to speculate on the biosynthetic origins of so me of these exotic marine natural products.