Using a number of outstanding examples, this text introduces readers to the immense variety of marine natural compounds, the methodologies to characterize them and the approaches to explore their industrial potential. Care is also taken to discuss the function and ecological context of the compounds. Carefully produced and easy to read, this book serves students and professionals wishing to familiarize themselves with the field, and is ideally suited as a course book for both industry to academia.

Stephane La Barre is a senior research scientist at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He obtained his MSc. Degree from Auckland University, New Zealand, and his PhD at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia, before entering CNRS in 1984. His multi-disciplinary career includes marine chemical ecology, natural products chemistry of terrestrial and marine organisms and polymer chemistry. Stephane La Barre is currently the coordinator of the research cluster BioChiMar (Marine Biodiversity and Chemodiversity), and he is developing research on new analytical tools to evaluate and predict environmental changes on coral reefs diversity, both biological and chemical. Jean-Michel Kornprobst is emeritus professor at the University of Nantes, France. He is engineer in chemistry (Montpellier) and got his PhD at the University of Lyon in 1969. Assistant-professor at the University Paris 7 from 1970 to 1973, he became professor of organic chemistry at the University of Dakar, Senegal and worked on marine natural products from 1974 to 1990 and he created a scuba diving school at Dakar in 1984. He joined the University of Nantes in 1990 and became emeritus professor in 2003. He was responsible for two research programs on manapros at the University of Doha, Qatar, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He published more than 100 publications and 3 books. He has recently been an invited professor at the Universities of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, Campinas, Brazil, and Blida, Algeria and he is currently external member of the scientific advisory board of the marine Biotechnology Research Center (MRBC) of Rimouski, Quebec, Canada.

PART 1. OUTSTANDING MARINE MOLECULES FROM A CHEMICAL POINT OF VIEW Marine Cyanotoxins Potentially Harmful to Human Health (Melanie Roue, Muriel Gugger, Stjepko Golubic, Zouher Amzil, Romulo Araoz, Jean Turquet, Mireille Chinain, Dominique Laurent) Marine Biotoxins: STX, TTX, CTX (Philippe Amade, Mohamed Mehiri, Richard J. Lewis) Impact of Marine-Derived Penicillium Species in the Discovery of New Potential Antitumor Drugs (Yves-Francois Pouchus, Marieke Vansteelandt, Catherine Roullier, Elodie Blanchet, Yan Guitton) Astonishing Fungal Diversity in Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Ecosystems: An Untapped Resource of Biotechnological Potential? (Gaetan Burgaud, Laurence Meslet-Cladiere, Georges Barbier, Virginia. P. Edgcomb) Glycolipids from Marine Invertebrates (Gilles Barnathan, Aurelie Couzinet-Mossion, Gaetane Wielgosz-Collin, Nicolas Ruiz, Olivier Grovel) Pigments of Living Fossil Crinoids (Jean-Michel Kornprobst, Cecile Debitus) PART 2. OUTSTANDING MARINE MOLECULES FROM AN ECOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW Bacterial Communication Systems (Tilmann Harder, Scott Rice, Sergey Dobretsov, Torsten Thomas, Alyssa Carre-Mlouka, Staffan Kjellberg, Peter Steinberg, Diane McDougald) Domoic Acid (Stephane La Barre, Stephen Bates, Michael Quilliam) Algal Morphoinducers (Benedicte Charrier, Zofia Nehr) Halogenation and Vanadium Haloperoxidases (Catherine Leblanc, Jean-Baptiste Fournier) PART 3. OUTSTANDING MARINE MOLECULES FOR THEIR BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES New Promising Substances in Pharmacology (Marie-Lise Bourguet-Kondracki, Jean-Michel Kornprobst) Promises of the Unprecedented Aminosterol Squalamine (Jean-Michel Brunel, Marie-Lise Bourguet-Kondracki) Marine Peptide Secondary Metabolites (Bernard Banaigs, Isabelle Bonnard, Anne Witzak, Nicolas Inguimbert) Conotoxins and other Conopeptides (David Craik, Quentin Kaas) Mycosporin-Like Amino Acids (MAAs) in Biological Photosystems (Stephane La Barre, Joel Boustie, Catherine Roulier) The Extracellular Hemoglobins from Annelids and their Potentials used in Biotechnology (Franck Zal, Morgan Rousselot) Lamellarins: A Tribu of Bioactive Marine Natural Products (Christian Bailly) PART 4: NEW TRENDS IN ANALYTICAL METHODS NMR to Elucidate Structure (Stephane Cerantola, Gaelle Simon, Nelly Kervarec) General Introduction to Omics (Catherine Boyen, Jonas Collen) Gene Mining for Environmental Studies and Applications: Examples from Marine Organisms (Thierry Tonon, Simon Dittami) Proteomics and Metabolomics of Marine Organisms: Current Strategies and Knowledge (Philippe Potin, Funny Gaillard) Genomics of the Biosynthesis of Natural Products: From Genes to Metabolites (Olivier Ploux, Annick Mejean) High-Throughput Screening of Marine Resources (Stephane Bach, Arnaud Hochard, Luc Reininger, Sandrine Ruchaud)