Ichthyotoxic substances

All of these polypropionate derivatives are antibacterial, cytotoxic and ichthyotoxic and there seems no doubt that they function as defense allomones. A recent pubhcation entirely devoted to polypropionates of marine origin contains many details about this category of natural substances (Davies-Coleman and Carson, 1998). More than 50 polypropionates have been characterized in sacoglossans since the late 1970s, and some of them are presented in chronological order of their discovery in Figure 23.29. Among these, the cyercenes are biosynthesized de novo by the mollusk. 

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