The ecteinascidins are a family of tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloids isolated from the tunicate Ecteinascidia turbinata. Ecteinascidin 743 is a candidate for the treatment of several human cancers. Ecteinascidins have been shown to kill tumor cells in vitro, inhibit tumor growth in vivo, suppress all...

Natural products have long been recognized for their medicinal value in traditional medicine and remain an important component of modern drug discovery. Known for their immense structural diversity, natural products are secondary metabolites that often exhibit unique pharmacological properties. In t...

This study examined the microbiota associated with the marine azooxanthellate octocorals Leptogorgia minimata, Swiftia exertia, and Iciligorgia schrammi collected from moderate depths (45 m). Traditional aerobic plate culture, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and molecular identification o...

Novel lipidyl pseudopteranoids, lipidyl pseudopteranes A-F (1-6), have been isolated from the soft coral Pseudopterogorgia acerosa collected from the Bahamas. Structure elucidation of the six new compounds was based on 1D and 2D NMR data and mass spectrometry, and a biomimetic synthesis of 1 from ps...

An enzyme-based assay has been developed and utilized to confirm the production of formaldehyde in the dealkylation of sterol side chains in a marine sponge. The enzyme used in the assay, formaldehyde dehydrogenase, is NAD+ dependent, and the assay measures the production of NADH by determining the ...

LC-MS/MS-based screening of the dichloromethane extract of the gorgonian coral Pseudopterogorgia acerosa led to the isolation of a novel bis(pseudopterane) amine (1). The structural assignment of 1 was achieved by 1D and 2D NMR and mass spectrometry analysis. A biomimetic synthesis of 1 and the know...

Marine diterpene glycosides (MDGs) respresent a small but highly significant group of the much larger class of marine diterpenes. The three well-studied examples of MDGs are eleutherobins, pseudopterosins and fuscosides, all of which exhibit extremely promising biological activity. The eleutherobins...

Westerdykella reniformis Ebead & Overy sp. nov. is described based on morphology and phylogenetic analyses using ITS, nLSU rDNA, and β-tubulin gene sequences. Westerdykella reniformis is characterized by the production of cleistothecioid ascomata, containing small globose to subglobose asci with 32...

Gorgonian corals continue to provide a wealth of novel structures, many of which exhibit potentially useful biological activity. Notably, the families Briareidae, Gorgoniidae and Plexauridae have been demonstrated to contain a wide variety of natural products including steroids, acetogenins, sesquit...

Gorgonian corals have proven to be a prolific source of a variety of biologically active terpenes. Corals of the genus Plexaurella are known to be the source of a diverse array of sesquiterpenes, and past reports have indicated variability in terpene content. This study involved an examination of th...