Abstract
Marine microorganisms continue to be a source of structurally and biologically novel compounds with potential use in the biotechnology industry. The unique physiochemical properties of the marine environment (such as pH, pressure, temperature, osmolarity) and uncommon functional groups (such as isonitrile, dichloroimine, isocyanate, and halogenated functional groups) are frequently found in marine metabolites. These facts have resulted in the production of bioactive substances with different properties than those found in terrestrial habitats. In fact, the marine environment contains a relatively untapped reservoir of bioactivity. Recent advances in genomics, metagenomics, proteomics, combinatorial biosynthesis, synthetic biology, screening methods, expression systems, bioinformatics, and the ever increasing availability of sequenced genomes provides us with more opportunities than ever in the discovery of novel bioactive compounds and biocatalysts. The combination of these advanced techniques with traditional techniques, together with the use of dereplication strategies to eliminate known compounds, provides a powerful tool in the discovery of novel marine bioactive compounds. This review outlines and discusses the emerging strategies for the biodiscovery of these bioactive compounds.
Highlights
The marine habitat continues to be a source of unique natural products used for pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications [1]
Genetic fingerprinting—another technique commonly used in partial community analysis—generates a profile of a microbial community based on the direct analysis of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products amplified from environmental DNA, generally using 16S rRNA gene analysis [45]
Gene-guided screening has been developed towards target genes associated with the biosynthetic pathways of bioactive compounds, such as those associated with the production of PoliKetyde Synthase (PKS) [117,118], NRPS [117,118], bacteriocins [143] and dTDP-glucose-4,6-dehydratase [144]
Summary
The marine habitat continues to be a source of unique natural products used for pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications [1]. There is a huge interest in extremophiles, as the robustness of their biocatalysts have allowed them to adapt in order to survive and thrive in extreme ecological niches such as in high or low temperatures, extremes of pH, high salt concentrations and high pressure These characteristics, along with substrate specificity, are evolved properties that are linked to the metabolic functions of the enzymes and to the ecological asset related to natural sources [7]. This biodiversity has greatly increased interest in this field. Sponges are the dominant source of novel natural products in the marine environment. Strategies for the discovery of novel marine bioactive compounds are discussed, in particular, how modern molecular biology approaches (―omic‖ approaches) can be integrated with microbiology techniques to provide new and better options for the mining of novel bioactive compounds and enzymes from marine bacteria
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