A Theme Issue Honoring Professor Peter Proksch’s 70th Birthday

The following commemorative Special Issue on bioactive compounds from the ocean is in honor of Prof. Dr. Peter Proksch on his 70th birthday. Prof. Dr. Proksch is an internationally recognized scientist in research on both terrestrial and marine natural products. Prof. Dr. Proksch worked with terrestrial plants in the early stage of his career and started to work on marine natural products some thirty years ago. He once said, "When I started to work on marine natural products, I was attracted to this fascinating field of science by the exotic environment, the colorful shapes of (mostly) marine invertebrates, and their complex ecological interactions". In parallel to marine macroorganisms, he soon embarked on studying natural products from marine-derived microorganisms, discovering a huge amount of biodiversity and highly unusual and complex microbial natural products. The topics of this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following: The isolation, structural elucidation, and bioactivity of new molecules from marine organisms; The characterization of proteins, enzymes, and saccharides from marine organisms; The biosynthesis of bioactive compounds from marine organisms; The design, synthesis, modification, and structure-activity relationship of bioactive compounds from marine organisms; The pharmacological mechanisms of bioactive compounds from marine organisms.