ABSTRACT
A few categories of biomedical compounds, starting with antibiotics. Although only one group of antibiotics has hitherto been developed from marine life, there are probably antibiotic organisms in every class of marine creatures. The marine realm has already supplied with many start-point materials for anticancer drugs, in compounds derived from corals, sea anemones, sharks, stingrays, mollusks, segmented worms, sponges, sea squirts, sea cucumbers, proboscis worms, and the horseshoe crab. A host of other marine organisms supply with research models. The hagfish, with no thymus gland, also has no immune system that could cause rejection of grafts–a trait that makes it an excellent subject for the study of skin grafts in humans. Marine ecosystems, and especially close-to-shore ecosystems, are undergoing much degradation. Conservation of marine ecosystems has been disrupted by all these sources of pollution at precisely the locations where the great majority of marine organisms live.
