Bioactive natural products from marine angiosperms: abundance and functions

Abstract

This review explores the natural products of seagrass that are to be exploited for their bioactive potential. Beside from portraying the presence of a wide array of secondary compounds such as phenols, flavonoids, sterols and lipids from different seagrass species, the focus is on novel natural products projecting towards their biological applications. Though there are a significant number of reports on the abundance of secondary metabolites from seagrass and their bioactive derivatives, only a small number of reports explore their functional and defensive characteristics. Efforts have been made to collate the available information on seagrass natural products and clarify their function and metabolic pathway's. It is emphasized that metabolic profiling of seagrass should be extensively progressed to obtain a deeper knowledge about the specific roles of each natural product. The investigation of seagrass natural products for their bioactive potential would most likely result in the detection of surprising and unexpected novel chemical structures and clinical leads that may be useful to mankind.Keywords: natural products, phenolic compounds, phenylpropanoid derivatives, seagrasses, secondary metabolites Seagrasses-the Marine AngiospermsSeagrasses, a functional group of flowering plants rooted in the world's coastal oceans, are well known for their secondary metabolites. The current comprehensive review on "Bioactive natural products from marine angiosperms'' was performed in such a way that recent discoveries in the field of seagrass secondary metabolism need to be reviewed. In this review is not possible to detail in a just few pages the full gamut of studies, since our understanding of natural products from seagrasses has increased markedly in the last few decades. Several studies have documented the abundance of these natural metabolites in seagrasses and some have focused on their bioactive potential. Though there are probably 72 species of seagrasses worldwide, only a few have been explored for their natural products and their determinant role. Recently, the secondary metabolites of P. oceanica were compiled 1 , appraised and were summarized into 51 natural products including phenols, phenylmethane, phenylethane, phenylpropane derivatives and their esters, chalkones and flavonoids. These chemical compounds synthesized by secondary metabolic pathways are not involved in the normal growth, development or reproduction but usually have roles in adaptation processes under stress conditions.A severe or long lasting stress factor could induce an excessive shift between primary and secondary metabolism and consequently, a diversion of essential available resources from growth to defense 2 , since the products of primary metabolism are the precursors for secondary metabolic pathways. The topics provided in this paper are limited to seagrass secondary metabolism although it has become clear that a clear line between primary and secondary metabolism cannot be drawn. Hence, the present review aims to collate th...

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