Marine biotechnology encompasses biotechnology in areas such as marine microbiology, biomedical important marine natural products, organisms in extreme environments, and aquaculture. Marine biotechnology, today, poised to flourish more than ever from the confluences that are occurring in fundamental research in modern biology and other areas of science. Using research results from our laboratory and those from others, we will review the current advances of marine biotechnology in this lecture.

Foods and related substances from diverse sources known to have a potential for disease risk reduction are called functional foods, while nutraceuticals are bioactive compounds isolated from food and sold in dosage form. Nutraceutical and functional food industries are rapidly growing in recent years and most of the cases development of these functional materials involves certain biotransformation processes. A number of bioactive compounds has been identified up to date and isolated from seafood related products through enzyme-mediated hydrolysis. The enzymatic bioconversion process require suitable biocatalysts and appropriate bioreactor systems to incubate byproducts with digestive enzymes. Membrane bioreactor technology is recently emerging for the development of bioactive compounds from seafood processing byproducts.

This paper deals mainly with chemical and biological investigations, recently effected in the authors' laboratory, of Chinese tropical marine plants and invertebrates on three topics: 1) an unusual macrocyclic polydisulfide from the Chinese mangrove Bruguiera gymnorrhiza; 2) polyhydroxylpolyene compounds from marine dinoflagellate Amphidinium sp.; 3) two new series of uncommon steroids from marine in vertebrates.

Molecular biology and microalgal biotechnology have the potential to play a major role in improving the production efficiency of a vast variety of products including functional foods, industrial chemicals, compounds with therapeutic applications and bioremediation solutions from a virtually untapped source. Microalgae are a source of natural products and have been recently studied for biotechnological applications. Efficient genetic transformation systems in microalgae are necessary to enhance their potential to be used for human health. A microalga such as Chlarella is a eukaryotic organism sharing its metabolic pathways with higher plants. This microalga is capable of expressing, glycosylating, and correctly processing proteins which normally undergo post-translational modification. Moreover, it can be cultured inexpensively because it requires only limited amount of sunlight and carbon dioxide as energy sources. Because of these advantages, Chlarella may be of great potential interest in biotechnology as a good candidate for bioreactor in the production of pharmaceutical and industrial compounds for human functional foods. Here, we briefly discuss recent progress in microalgal transgenesis that has utilized molecular biology to produce functional proteins and bioactive compounds.

Large scale marine biodiversity studies in China have been carried out for more than half a century since the founding of the Institute of Oceanology, CAS, in 1950. Through a series of coastal and multi-disciplinary oceanographic investigations in the shelf seas and biodiversity studies since the late fifties, a total of 20,278 species of marine biota have been recorded upto 1994. Recent intensive studies have further revealed the richness of marine biota of the China seas,a great number of marine species have been found and many new taxa established. The total species number of main biotic groups increased about 50 % of that estimated in 1994. The results have promoted the fast development of China's marine fisheries, medicine (drug) and biodiversity research, and attracted many scientists, particularly bio-technologists, to join their studies. Environmental deterioration and human activity strongly stressed the sustainable development and conservation of marine bio-diversity, and resulted in the increase of end angered species as record ed in the new published ${\ll}$China Species Red List${\gg}$ with the threatened category of species assessed by adopting the new IUCN criteria. To further reveal the high diversity and their history, present status and future of marine organisms existed in the world ocean, an international Project ${\ll}$Census of Marine Life (CoML)${\gg}$ was established in 2000 in the USA. Scientists predicted that 2 to 3 times of numbers of the known species will possibly be found in various marine habitats, particularly the abyssal ocean. The Research Plan and the Projects were briefly introduced, and the relationship between marine biodiversity and biotechnology was discussed. The Project planned to apply new and high techniques and new equipments on board research vessel and in laboratory. Brief review of recent advances of Chinas' marine biodiversity and biotechnology studies indicated that fascinate results have been achcieved; but further effort should be made to promote the continuous advance of our basic researches and their application in related production and maintain sustainable development.