Marine fungi

Abstract

Marine fungi have long been considered as exotic microorganisms fascinating only a few scientists. However, during the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in marine fungal communities resulting in a considerable advance in our knowledge of marine fungi. Marine fungi have been retrieved from various marine habitats, ranging from coastal waters to the deep subseafloor, and their ecologically important roles have been demonstrated. The purpose of this chapter is to review the increasing amount of culture-based and molecular-based data along with metabolomics and to summarize our current knowledge of the diversity, adaptive capabilities, functions, ecological roles, and biotechnological potential of marine fungi. The availability of this amount of complementary data allows a revision of the consensual but likely out-of-date definition of marine fungi. Since the field of marine fungal natural products continues to expand rapidly, another aim of this chapter is to provide some innovative approaches to optimize the search for novel bioactive compounds using genomics and metabolomics.