Myxomycetes secondary metabolites

Dembitsky VM, Rezanka T, Spizek J, Hanus LO (2005) Secondary Metabolites of Slime Molds (Myxomycetes). Phytochemistry 66 747... 

ABSTRACT The Myxomycetes (true slime molds) are an unusual group of primitive organisms that may be assigned to one of the lowest classes of eukaryotes. As their fruit bodies are very small and it is very difficult to collect much quantity of slime molds, few studies have been made on the chemistry of myxomycetes. Cultivation of the plasmodium of myxomycetes in a practical scale for natural products chemistry studies is known only for very limited species such as Physarum polyeephalum. We recently studied the laboratory-cultivation of myxomycetes and several species have been successfully cultured in agar plates. Chemical constituents of cultured plasmodia of several species of myxomycetes of the genera Didymium and Physarum were examined to obtain several sterols, new lipid, or pyrroloiminoquinone derivatives. Previous studies on the chemistry of the secondary metabolites of myxomycetes by other groups are also described here. 

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