Bioactivity Potential of Marine Natural Products from Scleractinia-Associated Microbes and In Silico Anti-SARS-COV-2 Evaluation.

Heba Ali Ahmed,Ebaa M. El-Hossary,Gerhard Bringmann,Amgad Albohy,Usama Ramadan Abdelmohsen,Amira Khalil,Eman Maher Zahran,Alyaa Hatem Ibrahim

doi:10.3390/md18120645

Abstract

Marine organisms and their associated microbes are rich in diverse chemical leads. With the development of marine biotechnology, a considerable number of research activities are focused on marine bacteria and fungi-derived bioactive compounds. Marine bacteria and fungi are ranked on the top of the hierarchy of all organisms, as they are responsible for producing a wide range of bioactive secondary metabolites with possible pharmaceutical applications. Thus, they have the potential to provide future drugs against challenging diseases, such as cancer, a range of viral diseases, malaria, and inflammation. This review aims at describing the literature on secondary metabolites that have been obtained from Scleractinian-associated organisms including bacteria, fungi, and zooxanthellae, with full coverage of the period from 1982 to 2020, as well as illustrating their biological activities and structure activity relationship (SAR). Moreover, all these compounds were filtered based on ADME analysis to determine their physicochemical properties, and 15 compounds were selected. The selected compounds were virtually investigated for potential inhibition for SARS-CoV-2 targets using molecular docking studies. Promising potential results against SARS-CoV-2 RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and methyltransferase (nsp16) are presented.

Highlights

Marine ecosystems harbor numerous, still unexplored and taxonomically diverse micro- and macro-organisms
Following the biosynthetic pathway of duclauxin (83) from Talaromyces stipitatus, a cascade of redox transformations was characterized to start with the dioxygenase DuxM, to proceed via redox enzymes, and to end with oxidative coupling catalyzed by a P450 monooxygenase [40]
The results demonstrated that the attenuation of gorgosterol production in aposymbiotic zooxanthellae is linked to an increase in dimethylpropiothetin biosynthesis through a decrease in S-adenosylmethionine concentration [70]

Summary

Introduction

Still unexplored and taxonomically diverse micro- and macro-organisms. Coral reefs are considered to be the biologically most diverse ecosystem on earth It is recognized as an important source of bioactive secondary metabolites [7]. The largest portion of Scleractinian-associated microorganisms were only identified, a vast number was subjected to chemical investigation and led to the isolation and structural elucidation of 134 compounds up to date. Diverse classes of compounds were isolated from Scleractinia-associated microorganisms, with xanthones and anthraquinones being the most abundant metabolites (15%), all of which were isolated from fungal strains (Figure 6). The metabolites isolated from Scleractinia-associated organisms exhibited diverse biological activities, with more than 50% of the isolated compounds having cytotoxic properties (33%), followed by antibacterial (22%) potencies (Figure 7)

Scleractinia-Associated Fungi

Scleractinia-Associated Bacteria

Scleractinia-Associated Zooxanthellae

Findings

Conclusions