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Bioassay-directed fractionation of the MeCOEt extract of Porella cordeana yielded drimenin [1] and aristolone [4], which were moderately toxic towards DNA-repair-deficient mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Three inactive sesquiterpenes, 7-ketoisodrimenin [2], 7-ketoisodrimenin-5-ene [3], and norpinguisanolide, were also obtained. Compounds 2 and

3 are new.

Bioassays that detect the presence of compounds that act by a specific biochemical mechanism likely to result in selective anticancer activity are becoming more frequently deployed in the biological screening of natural product extracts (1—4). One assay recently developed (4) utilizes DNA repair-or recombination-deficient mutants of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to detect the presence of compounds which induce DNA damage.