Marine Natural Products and Their Potential Application in the Future

Abstract

Oceans are the diverse resource, which cover more than 70% of the earth’s surface. No doubt, with 34 of 36 phyla of life represented, oceans are the greatest biodiversity in the world [1]. They are the extraordinary natural source of microorganism, algae, sponge, coelenterate, bryozoan, mollusk, and echinoderm. Especially, on coral reef, where shelter more than 1000 species per m². Surprisingly, there is only a small number of researches in this field. Therefore increasing research on marine natural source may provide good results for exploiting and developing valuable natural products which benefit for human. Marine environment is a rich source of biological and chemical diversity. The diversity has been unique source of chemical compounds of potential for pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, dietary supplements, and agrochemicals. Ecological pressure, including competitions for food and space, the fouling of predator and surface, has led to the evolution of secondary metabolites with various biological activities. Many organisms are soft bodies and/or unmoved, hardly survive with the threat from around environment. Hence they have evolved the ability to synthesize toxic compounds or obtain them from microorganism to defense against predator or to paralyze their prey. The questions such as, why do fish not eat particular algae? Why do two sponges grow and expand until they reach but not grow over each other? may be explained by these reasons. For the past 30 - 40 years, marine invertebrates have been an attractive research topic for scientists all over the world. A small number of marine plants, animals, and microbes have yielded not less than 14000 natural products [2]. Of which, there are a lot of compounds showed potential pharmaceutical activities. Promisingly, some of them have been launched to the market and the others have been in clinical trials. In this review, we focus on marine natural products which have been targets in pharmaceutical industry, benefiting for human life as well as their potential applications in the future. AJSTD Vol.22(4) pp.297-311 (2005)