Marine Natural Products V3

Marine Natural Products: Chemical and Biological Perspectives, Volume III, reviews the state of knowledge in the chemistry and biology of marine natural products. It attempts to bring together timely and critical reviews that are representative of major current researches and that, hopefully, will also foreshadow future trends. The volume's first chapter discusses separation techniques, including liquid-liquid extraction, membrane separation, chromatography, capillary gas chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography. This is followed by a chapter on amino acids that have been isolated from marine algae. Kainic acid, for instance, is a well-established ascaricide that was isolated from a red alga that had been known as an anthelmintic for a thousand years. Only recently, however, has it been recognized as a valuable tool in neurophy sinology. Subsequent chapters deal with nitrogenous pigments in marine invertebrates; and the phenomenon of bioluminescence, which is relatively rare among terrestrial organisms, but which is widespread among marine biota.