Progress in the Chemistry of Organic Natural Products 111

Book excerpt: The first chapter in volume 111 summarizes research on the sesterterpenoids, which are known as a relatively small group of natural products. However, they express a variety of simple to complicated chemical structures. This chapter focuses on the chemical structures of sesterterpenoids and how their structures are synthesized in Nature. The second chapter is devoted to marine-derived fungi, which play an important role in the search for structurally unique secondary metabolites, some of which show promising pharmacological activities that make them useful leads for drug discovery. Marine natural product research in China in general has made enormous progress in the last two decades as described in this chapter on fungal metabolites. This contribution covers 613 new natural products reported from 2001 to 2017 from marine-derived fungi obtained from algae, sponges, corals, and other marine organisms from Chinese waters.