scholarly journals Origins and Bioactivities of Natural Compounds Derived from Marine Ascidians and Their Symbionts

Marine Drugs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoju Dou ◽  
Bo Dong

Marine ascidians are becoming important drug sources that provide abundant secondary metabolites with novel structures and high bioactivities. As one of the most chemically prolific marine animals, more than 1200 inspirational natural products, such as alkaloids, peptides, and polyketides, with intricate and novel chemical structures have been identified from ascidians. Some of them have been successfully developed as lead compounds or highly efficient drugs. Although numerous compounds that exist in ascidians have been structurally and functionally identified, their origins are not clear. Interestingly, growing evidence has shown that these natural products not only come from ascidians, but they also originate from symbiotic microbes. This review classifies the identified natural products from ascidians and the associated symbionts. Then, we discuss the diversity of ascidian symbiotic microbe communities, which synthesize diverse natural products that are beneficial for the hosts. Identification of the complex interactions between the symbiont and the host is a useful approach to discovering ways that direct the biosynthesis of novel bioactive compounds with pharmaceutical potentials.

Marine Drugs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minghua Jiang ◽  
Zhenger Wu ◽  
Heng Guo ◽  
Lan Liu ◽  
Senhua Chen

Marine-derived fungi are a significant source of pharmacologically active metabolites with interesting structural properties, especially terpenoids with biological and chemical diversity. In the past five years, there has been a tremendous increase in the rate of new terpenoids from marine-derived fungi being discovered. In this updated review, we examine the chemical structures and bioactive properties of new terpenes from marine-derived fungi, and the biodiversity of these fungi from 2015 to 2019. A total of 140 research papers describing 471 new terpenoids of six groups (monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, diterpenes, sesterterpenes, triterpenes, and meroterpenes) from 133 marine fungal strains belonging to 34 genera were included. Among them, sesquiterpenes, meroterpenes, and diterpenes comprise the largest proportions of terpenes, and the fungi genera of Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Trichoderma are the dominant producers of terpenoids. The majority of the marine-derived fungi are isolated from live marine matter: marine animals and aquatic plants (including mangrove plants and algae). Moreover, many terpenoids display various bioactivities, including cytotoxicity, antibacterial activity, lethal toxicity, anti-inflammatory activity, enzyme inhibitor activity, etc. In our opinion, the chemical diversity and biological activities of these novel terpenoids will provide medical and chemical researchers with a plenty variety of promising lead compounds for the development of marine drugs.


Author(s):  
Sanrda Kim Tiam ◽  
Muriel Gugger ◽  
Justine Demay ◽  
Severine Le Manach ◽  
Charlotte Duval ◽  
...  

Cyanobacteria are an ancient lineage of slow-growing photosynthetic bacteria and a prolific source of natural products with diverse chemical structures and potent biological activities and toxicities. The chemical identification of these compounds remains a major bottleneck. Strategies that can prioritize the most prolific strains and novel compounds are of great interest. Here, we combine chemical analysis and genomics to investigate the chemodiversity of secondary metabolites based on their pattern of distribution within some cyanobacteria. Planktothrix being a cyanobacterial genus known to form blooms worldwide and to produce a broad spectrum of toxins and other bioactive compounds, we applied this combined approach on four closely related strains of Planktothrix. The chemical diversity of the metabolites produced by the four strains was evaluated using an untargeted metabolomics strategy with high-resolution LC-MS. Metabolite profiles were correlated with the potential of metabolite production identified by genomics for the different strains. Although, the Planktothrix strains present a global similarity in term biosynthetic cluster gene for microcystin, aeruginosin and prenylagaramide for example, we found remarkable strain-specific chemo-diversity. Only few of the chemical features were common to the four studied strains. Additionally, the MS/MS data were analyzed using Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) to identify molecular families of the same biosynthetic origin. In conclusion, we present an efficient integrative strategy for elucidating the chemical diversity of a given genus and link the data obtained from analytical chemistry to biosynthetic genes of cyanobacteria.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Daletos ◽  
Weaam Ebrahim ◽  
Elena Ancheeva ◽  
Mona El-Neketi ◽  
Weiguo Song ◽  
...  

Background: Over the last two decades, deep-sea-derived fungi are considered to be a new source of pharmacologically active secondary metabolites for drug discovery mainly based on the underlying assumption that the uniqueness of the deep sea will give rise to equally unprecedented natural products. Indeed, up to now over 200 new metabolites have been identified from deep-sea fungi, which is in support of the statement made above. Results: This review summarizes the new and/or bioactive compounds reported from deepsea- derived fungi in the last six years (2010 – October 2016) and critically evaluates whether the data published so far really support the notion that these fungi are a promising source of new bioactive chemical entities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian-Tian Sun ◽  
Hua-Jie Zhu ◽  
Fei Cao

: Respiratory viruses, including influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, coronavirus, et al., have seriously threatened the human health. For example, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS, affected a large number of countries around the world. Marine organisms, which could produce secondary metabolites with novel structures and abundant biological activities, are an important source for seeking effective drugs against respiratory viruses. This report reviews marine natural products with activities against respiratory viruses, the emphasis of which was put on structures and antiviral activities of these natural products. This review has described 167 marine-derived secondary metabolites with activities against respiratory viruses published during 1981 to 2019. Altogether 102 references are cited in this review article.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Sebak ◽  
Amal E. Saafan ◽  
Sameh Abdelghani ◽  
Walid Bakeer ◽  
Abeer S. Moawad ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The rapid spread of antibiotic resistance has increased research interest in the discovery of natural products, mainly from actinomycetes, which have been the primary source of antimicrobial compounds. This study aimed to isolate, characterize, and optimize the production of some of the bioactive compounds from bioactive soil actinomycetes. Results One promising soil actinomycete, which was molecularly identified as Streptomyces sp. and designated as Streptomyces sp. MS. 10, showed broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, including activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Thus, it was selected for isolation of its major bioactive compounds. Polymerase chain reaction amplification of the genes responsible for antibiotic biosynthesis showed the presence of genes encoding type I and type II polyketide synthase. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis found that the major antimicrobial compounds produced by Streptomyces sp. MS. 10 were weakly ionized bioactive secondary metabolites. A large-scale fermentation experiment of Streptomyces sp. MS. 10 using pre-optimized culture conditions followed by bioassay-guided chromatographic separation of its secondary metabolites resulted in the isolation of putative bioactive compounds that were identified as fatty acids using proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Conclusions Egyptian soil is still a good source for exploring bioactive actinomycetes. Additionally, this study highlighted the importance of combining both physicochemical and genotypic characterization with spectroscopic analysis of the major natural products when isolating bioactive metabolites.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Francioso ◽  
Alessia Baseggio Conrado ◽  
Luciana Mosca ◽  
Mario Fontana

Sulfur contributes significantly to nature chemical diversity and thanks to its particular features allows fundamental biological reactions that no other element allows. Sulfur natural compounds are utilized by all living beings and depending on the function are distributed in the different kingdoms. It is no coincidence that marine organisms are one of the most important sources of sulfur natural products since most of the inorganic sulfur is metabolized in ocean environments where this element is abundant. Terrestrial organisms such as plants and microorganisms are also able to incorporate sulfur in organic molecules to produce primary metabolites (e.g., methionine, cysteine) and more complex unique chemical structures with diverse biological roles. Animals are not able to fix inorganic sulfur into biomolecules and are completely dependent on preformed organic sulfurous compounds to satisfy their sulfur needs. However, some higher species such as humans are able to build new sulfur-containing chemical entities starting especially from plants’ organosulfur precursors. Sulfur metabolism in humans is very complicated and plays a central role in redox biochemistry. The chemical properties, the large number of oxidation states, and the versatile reactivity of the oxygen family chalcogens make sulfur ideal for redox biological reactions and electron transfer processes. This review will explore sulfur metabolism related to redox biochemistry and will describe the various classes of sulfur-containing compounds spread all over the natural kingdoms. We will describe the chemistry and the biochemistry of well-known metabolites and also of the unknown and poorly studied sulfur natural products which are still in search for a biological role.


Author(s):  
Manal Selim Mohamed Selim ◽  
Sayeda Abdelrazek Abdelhamid ◽  
Sahar Saleh Mohamed

Abstract Background The ability to produce microbial bioactive compounds makes actinobacteria one of the most explored microbes among prokaryotes. The secondary metabolites of actinobacteria are known for their role in various physiological, cellular, and biological processes. Main body Actinomycetes are widely distributed in natural ecosystem habitats such as soil, rhizosphere soil, actinmycorrhizal plants, hypersaline soil, limestone, freshwater, marine, sponges, volcanic cave—hot spot, desert, air, insects gut, earthworm castings, goat feces, and endophytic actinomycetes. The most important features of microbial bioactive compounds are that they have specific microbial producers: their diverse bioactivities and their unique chemical structures. Actinomycetes represent a source of biologically active secondary metabolites like antibiotics, biopesticide agents, plant growth hormones, antitumor compounds, antiviral agents, pharmacological compounds, pigments, enzymes, enzyme inhibitors, anti-inflammatory compounds, single-cell protein feed, and biosurfactant. Short conclusions Further highlight that compounds derived from actinobacteria can be applied in a wide range of industrial applications in biomedicines and the ecological habitat is under-explored and yet to be investigated for unknown, rare actinomycetes diversity.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (19) ◽  
pp. 5922
Author(s):  
Constanze Paulus ◽  
Josef Zapp ◽  
Andriy Luzhetskyy

Peptide natural products displaying a wide range of biological activities have become important drug candidates over the years. Microorganisms have been a powerful source of such bioactive peptides, and Streptomyces have yielded many novel natural products thus far. In an effort to uncover such new, meaningful compounds, the metabolome of Streptomyces acidiscabies was analyzed thoroughly. Three new compounds, scabimycins A–C (1–3), were discovered, and their chemical structures were elucidated by NMR spectroscopy. The relative and absolute configurations were determined using ROESY NMR experiments and advanced Marfey’s method.


Author(s):  
Xiliang Yang ◽  
Jinping Liu ◽  
Jiahui Mei ◽  
Rui Jiang ◽  
Shizheng Tu ◽  
...  

: In recent years, marine-derived Penicillium fungi have received remarkable interest as a valuable source of novel natural products encompassing diverse chemical structures and bioactive properties. Mangroves, sediments, algae, and sponges are the four main sources of marine-derived Penicillium fungi. As of 2014, more than 390 novel natural products have been isolated from the marine-derived Penicillium fungi, mainly including polyketides, alkaloids, terpenoids, and macrolides. Biological investigations have shown that these compounds possess antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, cytotoxic, and other activities with potential applications in new drug development. To provide an updated catalog of this field, our mini-review summarized the origins, structures, and bioactivities of 188 secondary metabolites from marine-derived Penicillium fungi based on bioactivities classification published from 2015 to 2020.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (15) ◽  
pp. 1204-1218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Zhang ◽  
Junhong Liu ◽  
Dayong Shi ◽  
Zheng Li

: As important marine biological resources, corals produce a large amount of active organic compounds in their secondary metabolic processes, including numerous brominated, chlorinated, and iodinated compounds. These compounds, with novel structures and unique activities, guide the discovery and research of important lead compounds and novel biological mechanisms. Through a large number of literature surveys, this paper summarized a total of 145 halogenated secondary metabolites which were roughly divided into four major classes of terpenes, prostaglandins, steroids and alkaloids, and they were mainly isolated from ten coral families, Ellisellidae, Gorgoniidae, Briareidae, Plexauridae, Anthothelidae, Alcyoniidae, Clavularidae, Tubiporidae, Nephtheidae and Dendrophyllidae to the best of our knowledge. In addition, their organism species, structure composition and biological activity were also discussed in the form of a chart in this essay.


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