Encyclopedia of Marine Biotechnology, Professor Se-Kwon Kim, Editör, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, UK , Oxford, ss.2529-2584, 2020
The marine environment covers a vast part of the biosphere's surface. Marine invertebrates, which include tunicates, sponges, bryozoans, and mollusks, represent the core of the known marine biodiversity, since there are more of them than all organisms in the sea. Recent advances in aquaculture, deep-sea collection techniques, biotechnology, and high-throughput screening methods allow the isolation of various cytotoxic and antitumor marine compounds with novel mechanisms of action. The phylum Porifera, commonly referred to as sponges, are frequently considered to be the simplest multicellular animals with great ecological, commercial, and biopharmaceutical importance. Cnidarians are well-known producers of secondary metabolites and complex mixtures of proteinaceous venoms used for defense. This chapter overviews some of the most promising bioactive compounds isolated from cnidarians. The phylum Mollusca represents the second-largest animal phylum on Earth with eight classes. They have evolved alternative defense strategies such as antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral secondary metabolites to protect themselves.