Research and Development of Marine Bio-Organisms - Introduction and Its prospect -

A large number of natural products were worldwidely discovered from maine organisms. There are many secondary metabolites produced by maine organisms which showed very strong bio-activities and distinct bio-active mechanisms. In korea, about 350 secondary metabolites including more than 280 novel compounds have been isolated and structually defined. Many researches for developing products such as cosmetics, functional food materials, anti-fouling substances are being performed using distinct activities of marine organisms. Although the research on marine natural products has been remained at its initial or developing stage of drug development, significant progress has been made for isolation, structure determination and bioassay of secondary metabolites.