Bioactive Compounds from Marine Fungi

Dear Colleagues,

Nature continues to be most important in the delivery of new drugs or lead structures and the oceans are important sources of structurally unique natural products. Among the biota from the oceans marine-derived fungi are an outstanding source for secondary metabolites, many of which have highly complex structures, making them difficult to be supplied economically via chemical synthesis.

Fungi derived from marine sources are considered to represent a huge reservoir of secondary metabolites, many of which are biologically active and are produced e.g. by multifunctional enzyme complexes such as polyketide synthases (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). Marine fungi are highly potent producers of bioactive substances with antifungal, antibacterial, antiviral, cytotoxic and immunosuppressive activity. The various biological activities make them a valuable source for pharmaceutical applications.

From an ecological point of view fungal secondary metabolites may act specifically in interspecies interactions to protect the host and/or the producer against competitors and/or diseases. On the other hand, fungal metabolites are considered of great importance in the ecology of marine communities and the analysis of fungal genetics, fungal physiology and fungal natural compound profiles will be essential to understand the interrelationships between fungi and their environment.

In addition, the rapid progress in genomic information significantly stimulates the search for secondary metabolite producers and secondary metabolite biosynthesis. It greatly improves our knowledge on the potential of secondary metabolite production in fungi and already has demonstrated that fungi encode the genetic information for the biosynthesis of many as yet unknown compounds.

This is good reason to devote a special issue of Marine Drugs to the bioactive compounds from marine fungi.

Prof. Dr. Johannes F. Imhoff
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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 2900 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.