Phylum porifera

Considering the vast spectrum of marine biota, it is perhaps surprising that even twenty years after the initial report the phylum Porifera continues to be the... 

I. Phylum Porifera, Class Demospongiae Subclass Order Family Genus Location Terpenoid type Ref. 

Division Parazoa Phylum Porifera Class Calcarea Order Homocoela Order Heterocoela Class Demospongiae Order Myxospongida Order Keratosa Order Tetraxonida Order Hexactmellida... 

Metabolites of the phylum Porifera account for almost 50% of the natural products reported from marine invertebrates. Of the 2609 poriferan metabolites, 98% are derived from amino acid, acetogenin, or isoprenoid pathways. Isoprenoids account for 50% of all sponge metabolites, while amino acid and polyketide pathways account for 26% and 22%, respectively. A significant number of sponge metabolites appear to be derived from mixed biosynthetic pathways. Most structures reported containing carbohydrate moieties were glycosides. 

Animals of the phylum Porifera, meaning pore bearing, have an amazingly simple yet perfectly functional body plan which consists of collection of cells... 

The sponges (phylum Porifera) appeared in the Middle Cambrian. The bodies of these lower invertebrates are neither symmetrical nor differentiated into tissues. Sponges are less evolutionarily advanced than members of the phylum Cnidaria, which includes jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones. These two phyla may have arisen directly and independently from the protists (simple one-celled organisms such as bacteria, algae, etc.). 

BIOACTIVE METABOLITES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICAN MARINE SPONGES (PHYLUM PORIFERA)... 

The formation of the skeletal system from the earliest metazoans, the sponges (phylum Porifera) (Muller et al., 2(X)9a,b) to the crown taxa, the mammalians (Matsuo and Irie, 2008) and the insects (Moussian, 2010), is dominated by a tuned communication between cells controlling anabolic processes and cells executing catabolic reactions. Basically, two kinds of inorganic scaffold materials had been applied in the metazoan kingdom to form skeletons calcium (calcium-based skeletal systems) and—only found in siliceous sponges—silica (silica-based skeletons). 

The phylum Porifera or sponges which comprises the most primitive multicellular animals represents a rich source for discovery of natural compounds, most of them with considerable biological activity. This is demonstrated by numerous publications. Most investigations have dealt with terpenoids, but the steroidal constituents have also been examined thoroughly. The literature until about 1980 is reviewed by Bergquist and Wells (33) in a publication dealing with the chemotax-onomy of the Porifera. 

Table 4.2 shows that, although the phylum Porifera is the subject of less than one-third of the publications, it provides more than one-third of the molecules isolated from the marine environment. Lastly, as Table 4.3 shows, for over a more than 25-year period a new molecule has been extracted from a sponge every two days ... 

The subclass Homoscleromorpha has only one order, Homosclerophorida, which consists of only one family, Plakinidae. The position of Homoscleromorpha within the phylum Porifera has long been debated it was once regarded as a subclass of demosponges, but the results... 

Redmond, N.E., Van Soest, R.W.M., Kelly, M., Raleigh, J., Travers, S A A., and McCormack, G.P. (2007) Reassessment of the classification of the order Haplosclerida (Class Demospongiae, Phylum Porifera) using 18S rRNA gene sequence data. Mol. Phyl. Evol, 43, 344-352. 

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