Seas and oceans offer a wide range of temperature, pressure, light and chemical conditions thus allowing a wide diversity of marine organisms from shallow coastal waters to the deep ocean. These resources can be used to obtain new products and develop services, and in turn help to provide solutions to the challenges that affect our planet, including offering a sustainable supply of food and energy, new industrial materials and processes, new bioactive compounds, and new health treatments. Marine compounds have been identified as having antibacterial, anticoagulant, antifungal, antimalarial, antiprotozoal, antituberculosis, and antiviral activities. The major sources of these bioactive compounds are marine sponges, coelenterates, and microorganisms, followed by algae, echinoderms, tunicates, molluscs, and bryozoans.
The discovery of bioactive compounds from marine samples is a hot topic considering the current need for sustainable use of marine resources. This book is a comprehensive overview of the analytical techniques employed in the discovery and characterization of bioactive compounds isolated from (all possible) marine samples and gives future perspectives of analytical methodologies. This overview includes an assessment of the sampling and preparation of extracts, the separation and isolation of bioactive compounds, their structural characterization and the application of bioassays in the discovery of bioactive compounds.
- Comprehensive coverage of analytical techniques and applications
- Clear diagrams to adequately support important topics
- Real examples of applications of analytical techniques in the search for new bioactive compounds
Teresa Rocha-Santos has graduated in Analytical Chemistry (1996), obtained a PhD in Chemistry (2000) and an Aggregation in Chemistry (2018), both at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Presently, she is a Principal Researcher at Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) & Department of Chemistry of University of Aveiro (since 2014) and Vice-coordinator of CESAM research centre (from 2021). Her research concentrates on the development of new analytical methodologies fit for purpose and on the study of emerging contaminants (such as microplastics) fate and behaviour in the environment and during wastewater treatment. She published 170 scientific papers (Oct 2021) and has an h-index of 43 (Oct 2021). She is the editor of 7 Books. She is a member of the editorial board of Current Opinion in Environmental Science and Health, Elsevier (since 2017), Data in brief, Elsevier (since 2018), Science of the Total Environment, Elsevier (since 2018), Sensors, MDPI (since 2018), Molecules, MDPI (since 2018), Associate Editor of Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration, Springer (since 2016), and Associate Editor of Journal of Hazardous Materials (since 2019) and Co-Editor in Chief of Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances (since 2021).
Prof. Armando C. Duarte (http://www.cesam.ua.pt/aduarte) graduated in Chemical Engineering (1977) at the University of Oporto (Portugal) and obtained a PhD in Public Health Engineering (1981) at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (United Kingdom). In 2006, The Portuguese Science Foundation (www.fct.pt) awarded him a prize for Scientific Excellence and in 2013 he became a Member of the FCT Scientific Council for Natural and Environmental Sciences. He is a Professor of Environmental & Analytical Chemistry at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) since 1995, leader of a research group on the same subject, lecturer on Anaytical Quality Control subjects, and either supervising or co-supervising many PhD students, some of whom became members of staff, both as lecturers and researchers. His highly-interdisciplinary research spans areas of comprehensive environmental and analytical chemistry, qualimetrics and analytical quality assurance, but also includes the assessment of the relevance of new concepts and integration of different ideas into widely accepted frameworks, especially when applied to sustainability. He co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed publications leading to an h-factor of 38.
