ABSTRACT
Deportment o f Ocean Sciences, Tokyo University o f Marine Science and Technology, /Conan, Minoto-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, Japan
INTRODUCTION
Fungi isolated from marine environments are prolific resources of bio logically active secondary metabolites. The importance and attractive ness of marine fungi as a source of new biologically active compounds are recognized from the numbers of reviews describing marine fungal metabolites (Bugni and Ireland 2004, Proksch et al. 2002, Jensen and Fenical 2002, 2000, Verbist et al. 2000, Biabani and Laatsch 1998, Beman et al. 1997, Pietra 1997, Davidson 1995, Liberra and Lindequist 1995, Kobayashi and Ishibashi 1993). The driving force of the chemical study on marine fungi is derived from the successful history of terrestrial fungal products as new medicines and their leads. Traditional studies on terrestrial fungi resulted in the high rate of rediscovery of known compounds. The rate of new compounds versus known compounds of the metabolites from marine fungi is much higher than that of terrestrial species, although significant numbers of marine isolates are taxonomically similar or identical to terrestrial fungi. The ability to produce new sec ondary metabolites by marine fungi may be acquired by the tolerance or adaptation to marine environments such as salinity and high pressure. Since marine fungi are reproducible by the similar technology of fer mentation to that of terrestrial fungi, the supply problems, limiting the application of natural products obtained from marine invertebrates, will not be a problem for commercial application of marine fungal metabolites.
