Diterpenes from gorgonian corals

Submitted by mnpl on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 16:13

 Nat. Prod. Rep., 2009, 26, 681–710

Fabrice Berrue ab and Russell G. Kerr *ab
aDepartment of Chemistry, Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, C1A 4P3, Canada. E-mail: rkerr@upei.ca; Fax: +1 902 566 7445; Tel: +1 902 566 0565
bDepartment of Biomedical Sciences, Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, C1A 4P3, Canada

Received 5th December 2008 First published on the web 25th March 2009

Gorgonian corals continue to provide a wealth of novel structures, many of which exhibit potentially useful biological activity. Notably, the families Briareidae, Gorgoniidae and Plexauridae have been demonstrated to contain a wide variety of natural products including steroids, acetogenins, sesquiterpenes and diterpenes. The most common of the gorgonian natural products are the diterpenes, and the intent of this review is to describe such compounds isolated from gorgonian corals, with a focus on the structures of new compounds as well as their biological activity. There have been developments improving our understanding of the biosynthetic origin of selected diterpenes, and these will also be discussed. This review describes 602 new compounds from 177 articles.