Emeritus Professor Murray Munro
Position
Emeritus Professor
Field of Study
Bioactive natural products
Qualifications
BSc(Hons), PhD, FNZIC, FRSNZ
Room
760
Contact Details
Telephone: +64 3 364 2434
Fax: +64 3 364 2110
Email: murray.munro@canterbury.ac.nz
Background
Murray Munro has worked on natural products, mainly of New Zealand origin, right through his career. His early education was at the University of Otago [BSc(Hons)] followed by a PhD, also at Otago, with Professor Peter Grant on the diterpenoid constituents of the native pine Dacrydium colensoi. Several years were then spent at the University of Liverpool as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with Professor Sir Alan Battersby working on the isolation, synthesis and biosynthesis of new classes of alkaloids. In 1968 he was appointed to the University of Canterbury as a Lecturer in Chemistry. Following a sabbatical with Professor Ken Rinehart at the University of Illinois in 1973 an interest in marine natural products was developed with a particular focus on bioactive compounds. Over the years periods of leave have been spent at the University of Hawaii (Professor Dick Moore) and at the National Cancer Institute (Dr Mike Boyd) where the focus has always been on bioactive natural products. In recent years his research interests have widened to include terrestrial and marine fungi and actinomycetes, endophytes from New Zealand native trees, entomopathogenic fungi, as well as marine invertebrates.
Research Interests
The marine and terrestrial flora and fauna of NZ is being explored in a systematic fashion by the Marine Chemistry Group to identify those species that elaborate, or are host to symbionts that possess biological activity.
The Marine Chemistry Group is multidisciplinary and is comprised of two chemists (John Blunt and Murray Munro), a mycologist (Tony Cole; School of Biological Sciences ), and a biologist (Gill Ellis). The activities of the Marine Group are:
- the detection, isolation and structure determination of new bioactive compounds from NZ marine organisms. To date ~6,000 marine samples have been collected from the inter-tidal downwards. All samples have been screened by preparation of an extract from each sample and assayed against an in-house series of tests to detect cytotoxic, antiviral, antimicrobial or antifungal properties. Promising extracts are evaluated using a state-of-the-art dereplication system which effectively combines extract evaluation, separation and characterization into one process: the Department is well equipped with all the necessary instrumentation including a CapNMR probe.
- the isolation and cultivation of bioactive fungi. To date ~ 5,000 fungi have been isolated. On the terrestrial side the emphasis has been on isolation of endophytic, entomopathogenic as well as litter-dwelling fungi, while for marine samples symbiotic and commensal fungi are prime targets.
- the Marine Group has key contacts with mycologists in Malaysia and are working interactively with these academics in collaborative projects to evaluate the biological potential of Malaysian marine and terrestrial fungi. Malaysian students, working at Canterbury , are involved in these programmes.
- the Marine Group has also developed a bibliographic database (MarinlLit) of the marine natural products literature. This database has been in operation since 1988 and is currently used by over 100 groups world-wide to assist their research, particularly in the area of dereplication. For information on
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