Bacterial catecholate siderophores

Soil bacteria as well as those infecting other organisms have developed systems to secure iron necessary for their metabolism, which is generally not available in its free ionic form. As one of the possible strategies they learnt to produce secondary metabolites able to bind Fe3+ as water soluble complexes, so-called siderophores. A prominent group of these siderophores are compounds, which contain at least one catecholate unit. A survey of compounds isolated from bacterial cultures will be presented.