Abstract
Steroids are physiologically important compounds for animals, plants, and fungi, and they have significantly contributed to drug discovery for many years. Fungi mainly biosynthesize ergostane-type steroids such as ergosterol. However, after the basic skeleton is biosynthesized, chemical transformations can lead to the cleavage or rearrangement of the fundamental skeleton of steroids. The cleaved (seco) and rearranged (abeo) steroids are chemically and pharmacologically intriguing because they often exhibit biological activities. As ergostane-type steroids including the normal, seco, and abeo types have been isolated from the mushrooms of the Pleurotus genus, this review focuses on them as a resource of ergostane-type steroids, providing their distribution, structure determination, and biological activity.