Chemistry of Marine Tunicates Collected from Antarctica

Sofia Kokkaliari, Bill J. Baker

Department of Chemistry, University of South Florida Tampa, FL 33620

Marine organisms have attracted the interest of the scientific community in the past few decades. Aspiring from this development, research has been directed towards Antarctic organisms, due to the unique ecosystem. In this project, we attempted to isolate new compounds from Antarctic invertebrates and especially tunicates, which have been the source of multiple new and active compounds.  The tunicates were collected in numerous locations in the waters of Antarctica and at different depths. After extraction, a sequence of MPLC (medium pressure liquid chromatography) and HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) purification procedures were performed. The process was guided using proton NMR, and the compounds with the most interesting profile were isolated, identified and will be submitted in various bioassays to determine their activity.