Advances in chemical studies on low-molecular weight metabolites of marine fungi

The world oceans represent a resource of huge dimension, but their microbial diversity is still poorly understood. The chemistry of marine fungi was even a widely neglected part of natural product chemistry until recently. But symbiotic and epibiotic coexistence of fungi with higher forms of life, e.g. with sponges, forming highly specialised communities gave rise to an increasing interest in their secondary metabolism. More than 100 metabolites from marine fungi are known now, many of them showing fascinating structures or remarkable biological activities. This review gives a comprehensive summary of most structures and discusses their origin and properties.