Discussion

The concluding presentation on Marine Fungi will focus on the chemical aspects of this interdisciplinary research project. An activity-guided purification approach was used to isolate and characterise the compounds with whole cell anti-tumour activity present in marine fungal fermentation extracts. Efficient known compound dereplication was achieved at the level of active reversed-phase HPLC fractions. Some marine fungal strains proved to be prolific producers of diverse bioactive compounds, resulting from the expression of multiple biosynthetic pathways. Microbial biotransformation and precursor-directed biosynthesis were used to explore the SAR of the most promising lead compounds.