Bioactive natural products from marine angiosperms: Abundance and functions

Abstract

This review explores the natural products of seagrass that are to be exploited for their bioactive potential. Beside from portraying the presence of a wide array of secondary compounds such as phenols, flavonoids, sterols and lipids from different seagrass species, the focus is on novel natural products projecting towards their biological applications. Though there are a significant number of reports on the abundance of secondary metabolites from seagrass and their bioactive derivatives, only a small number of reports explore their functional and defensive characteristics. Efforts have been made to collate the available information on seagrass natural products and clarify their function and metabolic pathway’s. It is emphasized that metabolic profiling of seagrass should be extensively progressed to obtain a deeper knowledge about the specific roles of each natural product. The investigation of seagrass natural products for their bioactive potential would most likely result in the detection of surprising and unexpected novel chemical structures and clinical leads that may be useful to mankind.