Special Issue "Marine Natural Product Research in the UK"

Dear Colleagues,

Historically, natural products have played a crucial role in drug discovery as they are characterised by enormous structural complexities and a wide range of biological activities. Although natural products of terrestrial origin have been in the spotlight for several decades, the discovery of spongothymidine and spongouridine from the Caribbean marine sponge Tectitethya crypta (previously known as Cryptotethya crypta) in the early 1950s marked the beginning of the golden era for marine natural products discovery. Since then, a plethora of (biologically active) new metabolites has been isolated from marine invertebrates, microorganisms, and algae, which have significantly contributed to expanding the chemical scaffold’s diversity.

Furthermore, there is extensive research from a chemical ecology perspective that aims to understand how marine organisms can adapt to environmental factors through their secondary metabolites. One of the pioneers in the field of marine natural products chemistry and marine ecology is the British professor Dr. John Faulkner who studied herbivorous sea hares, for example, and showed an evolutionary adaptation in which those marine animals selectively fed on marine plants and used secondary metabolites for their own defence. The field of marine natural products would not be as successful and fruitful as it is today without significant contributions as a result of interdisciplinary research between natural products and synthetic chemists, biologists and microbiologists, and computational and taxonomy experts.

Advances in technologies such as sampling strategies, nanoscale NMR for structure determination, MS- and NMR-based metabolomics, total chemical synthesis, genome sequencing and genome mining, fermentation, and biotechnology are all crucial to the success of marine natural products as drug leads. This Special Issue invites UK-based researchers and their collaborators abroad to submit their studies on the discovery and identification of marine natural products based on omics approaches and NMR structural elucidation as well as on the biosynthesis or chemical synthesis of marine secondary metabolites and their biological activities and ecological roles.

Prof. Dr. Marcel Jaspars
Dr. RuAngelie Edrada-Ebel
Dr. Rainer Ebel
Dr. Sylvia Soldatou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• natural products
• drug discovery
• united kingdom
• marine microorganisms
• chemical synthesis
• biosynthesis
• genome mining
• structure elucidation
• biotechnology
• chemical ecology
• bioprospecting