ABSTRACT
Out of hundreds of seaweed species present along the Mediterranean and the Red Sea coasts of Egypt, only 43 species were used to extract and/or screen their potential bioactive compounds. The high diversity of seaweeds in the Red Sea has attracted Egyptian scientists to study their bioactive compounds, especially for their antimicrobial activity, where a total of 38 seaweed species were studied. Due to the high diversity of brown algae and their interesting bioactive compounds, they have been the focus of many researchers. On the other hand, only 16 seaweed species have been studied along the Mediterranean Sea coast. Despite the extraction of novel and promising bioactive compounds from Egyptian seaweeds, there is a need for discovering more applications that serve more industrial, medicinal, and pharmaceutical purposes. Moreover, the uncertainties of the taxonomy of most species with the lack of voucher specimens in most cases will greatly affect the applicability of the extracted compounds. Accordingly, using a combination of morphological and molecular data for seaweeds used to extract bioactive compounds should be mandatory.
