Iran has 1260 km of coastline that borders the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea in the northwest Indian Ocean. Marine algae are one of the natural resources in the marine ecosystem which produce a wide range of new secondary metabolites with various biological activities that play an important role in the pharmaceutical care. In this study the cytotoxic activity of 28 marine algae of Chabahar coas...

There is a general consensus that marine herbivores can affect algal species composition and abundance, but little empirical work exists on the role of herbivores as modifiers of the spatial structure of resource assemblages. Here, we test the consumption/bulldozing effects of the molluscan grazer Enoplochiton niger and its influence on the spatial structure of a low intertidal community domina...

Anticoagulant properties of marine algae have been extensively studied for the last 60 years. Sulphated polysaccharides (SPS) of three major divisions of marine algae, viz. Rhodophyta, Phaeophyta and Chlorophyta are reported to have such properties. Some of the active components have been chemically well characterized. Sulphated galactans and fucoidan sulphates from red and brown algae, respect...

Many species of marine algae have life cycles that involve multiple separate, free-living phases that frequently differ in ploidy levels. These complex life cycles have received increasing scientific attention over the past few decades, due to their usefulness for both ecological and evolutionary studies. I present a synthesis of our current knowledge of the ecological functioning and evolution...

Thirty-two species of Egyptian marine algae of Chlorophycophyta, Phaeophycophyta and Rhodophycophyta collected from the Mediterranean (17 spp.) and Red (15 spp.) Seas has been analyzed for their content of iodine. ' Distribution of iodine in Egyptian marine algae showed noticeable local differences. The highest values were obtained in the species collected from the Mediterranean Sea. Iodine con...

c-AMP dependent protein kinase (protein kinase A, PKA) is an important enzyme involved in the regulation of an increasing number of physiological processes including immune function, cardiovascular disease, memory disorders and cancer. The objective of this study was to evaluate the PKA inhibitory activity of a range of algal extracts, along with their fatty acid composition. Six algal species ...

Brown algae are multicellular marine organisms evolutionarily distant from both metazoans and land plants. The molecular or cellular mechanisms that govern the developmental patterning in brown algae are poorly characterized. Here, we report the first morphogenetic mutant, étoile (etl), produced in the brown algal model Ectocarpus siliculosus. Genetic, cellular, and morphometric analyses showed...