A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE BIOACTIVE METABOLITES

Abstract

Marine natural products with their obvious bioactivities and unique structural features have attracted the attention of biologists and chemists the world over for the past several decades. Especially, marine invertebrates such as sponges, tunicates and mollusks have provided the largest number of marine-derived secondary constituents including some of the most interesting drug candidates.During the course of our search for bioactive secondary metabolites, we collected 74 species of marine invertebrates from Micronesian and Korean waters and tested for antimicrobial, antiviral and anticancer activities from their extracts. The present study investigated aspects of the biologically active natural products of marine invertebrates, which are collected from two different sea areas. And studies on the chemical investigation of some invertebrates led to the isolation of alkaloids, acetylenes, phenols and terpenes. The structures of the novel metabolites have been elucidated by combined chemical and spectral methods.