The Pros And Cons Of Marine Biotechnology Research

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Drug discovery represents one of the most promising and highly visible outcomes of marine biotechnology research (Mishra, 2007).Bio-chemicals produced by marine invertebrates, algae and bacteria are very different than those from related terrestrial organisms and thus offer great potential as new classes of medicines. To date, examples of marine-derived drugs include an antibiotic from fungi, two closely related compounds from a sponge that treat cancer and the herpes virus, and a neurotoxin from a snail that has painkiller properties making it 10,000 times more potent than morphine without the side effects (Kim et al.,2010a,b).However, there are several more marine-derived compounds currently in clinical trials and it is likely that many more

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