Abstract
Marine fungi represent a huge potential for new natural products and an increased number of new metabolites have become known over the past years, while much of the hidden potential still needs to be uncovered. Representative examples of biodiversity studies of marine fungi and of natural products from a diverse selection of marine fungi from the author’s lab are highlighting important aspects of this research. If one considers the huge phylogenetic diversity of marine fungi and their almost ubiquitous distribution, and realizes that most of the published work on secondary metabolites of marine fungi has focused on just a few genera, strictly speaking Penicillium, Aspergillus and maybe also Fusarium and Cladosporium, the diversity of marine fungi is not adequately represented in investigations on their secondary metabolites and the less studied species deserve special attention. In addition to results on recently discovered new secondary metabolites of Penicillium species, the diversity of fungi in selected marine habitats is highlighted and examples of groups of secondary metabolites produced by representatives of a variety of different genera and their bioactivities are presented. Special focus is given to the production of groups of derivatives of metabolites by the fungi and to significant differences in biological activities due to small structural changes.
Highlights
For many years the study of marine fungi has been largely neglected for several reasons
Even in deep-sea hydrothermal ecosystems, an unsuspected high diversity of fungal species was found using molecular approaches [8]. In consequence of this recognition, in recent years, an increasing number of new natural products have been characterized from marine fungi and there is no doubt that they produce a large number of interesting secondary metabolites, which often show pharmaceutically relevant bioactivities and may be candidates for the development of new drugs
Though representatives of Penicillium are among the most studied fungi and represent important drug producers, such as Penicillium chrysogenum (P. chrysogenum) as producer of penicillin and Penicillium griseofulvum as producer of griseofulvin, it is amazing how many new secondary metabolites continue to be found within this group of fungi as shown in reviews by Rateb and Ebel [6], Wang et al [13] and Blunt et al [11]
Summary
For many years the study of marine fungi has been largely neglected for several reasons. Despite the fact that many fungi are cosmopolitan and live as well in the sea as in other soil and freshwater habitats, in a number of cases we have obtained evidence that under the conditions of the marine environment, i.e., in the presence of marine salts, a different metabolite profile is produced by fungi as compared to the fresh water situation [1,2,3] This observation fits well with the general findings that changing the growth conditions is a good tool to promote the production of metabolites not seen under standard culture conditions. Even in deep-sea hydrothermal ecosystems, an unsuspected high diversity of fungal species was found using molecular approaches [8] In consequence of this recognition, in recent years, an increasing number of new natural products have been characterized from marine fungi and there is no doubt that they produce a large number of interesting secondary metabolites, which often show pharmaceutically relevant bioactivities and may be candidates for the development of new drugs. We will: (i) firstly summarize results on recently discovered new secondary metabolites of Penicillium species; (ii) highlight the diversity of fungi in selected marine habitats; and (iii) give examples of groups of secondary metabolites produced by fungi belonging to a wide range of genera, including their bioactivities
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