ABSTRACT
The term "marine natural products" was first used in the Scheuer's book "Chemistry of Marine Natural Products" published in 1973. The book described almost all of the secondary metabolites known from various marine organisms by 1971, yet the number of the compounds cited was only a few more than 200, indicating that this area of research was still in its infancy in the early 1970s. Undoubtedly the book has played an im portant role for directing the attention of many scientists to the sea and for accelerating research on marine natural products. Although still young, this area of science has undergone tremendous development in die last three decades. We now have some 8,000 unique compounds discovered from marine sources. A great number of them are metabolites of sponges. Some of them have been indispensable research tools for the advance ment of life sciences in recent years. Marine sponges have now been recognized as the most prolific sources of chemically diverse classes of compounds with a variety of biological activities including antimicrobial properties.
