Botrytis species:: An intriguing source of metabolites with a wide range of biological activities.: Structure, chemistry and bioactivity of metabolites isolated from Botrytis species

The Botrytis species belong to the most geographically widespread group of plant pathogens and saprophytes, and cause serious losses to very many commercial crops. These phytopathogenus fungi are the agents of the disease known as grey mould. They biosynthesise characteristic metabolites that, in vitro, produce the grey mould symptoms. The recent discovery that oxidative forces are involved when B. cinerea infects plant and the relevance of toxins for pathogenicity, have increased the interest for these compounds, in order to determinate the potential links to the plant oxyradical metabolism and the induction of oxidative stress. This review describes the metabolites isolated from Botrytis species, the spectroscopic data, grouping together by structural family, synthesis and chemical transformation, specially those carried out on botryane skeleton. The basic skeleton of botrydial is a bicyclic, non isoprenoid sesquiterpene system which has provided the stimulus for many investigations into the biosynthetic pathway to this skeleton. The biosynthetic studies carried out and the approaches to the asymmetric synthesis on this skeleton are reported in this paper. On the other hand, a detailed study on biological activity showed for these metabolites and the structure-activity relationship of metabolites with the botryanes skeleton is included.