Marine Metabolites: The Sterols of Soft Coral

A study was conducted to investigate the production of various classes of metabolites by soft corals. The soft corals subjected to chemical examination were collected from Indo Pacific region near Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia. The study gathered information from the pathways operating in the terrestrial plants and animals to propose biosynthetic relationships that existed between various sterols at the species level. It was demonstrated that sterols containing ring structure were to be converted into polar structure when the regular 3β-OH group was involved in glycoside formation. The study also demonstrated that the allyylic oxidation was route was followed to investigate a number of coral species and their capacity to produce various classes of metabolites.