Foreword

This book is a good introduction to those interested in Mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs), and will be an asset for students, university researchers, and corporate researchers.

MAAs are natural compounds synthesized by microorganisms to protect themselves from UV irradiation. Their usefulness is expected in various biological and industrial fields. This book describes MAAs in detail, from the basics to the applied perspectives. This book is composed of 11 sections. First, starting with the molecular structure of MAAs (Chapter 1), their distributions are outlined, focusing on cyanobacteria (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 has a detailed description of the MAAs biosynthetic pathway. These chapters will help readers gain a basic understanding of MAAs. Chapter 4 introduces the knowledge accumulated so far regarding the method of analysis and preparation of MAAs. The characteristics of MAAs are described in chapter 5 to 11. Each chapter is compactly organized from the point of view application so that readers will find the usefulness of MAAs. It should be noted that this book has abundant appendices. Information on more than 60 types of MAAs reported so far is summarized. Correlation diagrams of the molecular structures of these many MAAs are also available. This book thus can serve as a key reference work to all those working on MAAs.