Extraction and Characterization of Bioactive Compounds from Cultured and Natural Sponge, Haliclona molitba and Stylotella aurantium Origin of Indonesia

Abstract

Soft-body invertebrates, such as sponges are physically-weak organisms; however they mostly survive for thousands of years. This is due to the fact that they are capable of defending themselves from predators by releasing toxic substances as their secondary metabolites against the predators. These compounds are highly potent for medicine such as anti-microbial, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory activities. A large quantity of sponges are needed to produce bioactive compounds as their secondary metabolites only could get in small amount. This could provoke the sea-sponges overexploitation. Cultured sponges could be the one of the alternatives to prevent excessive natural sea-sponge exploitation. However, it is still unclear whether the cultured sponge has similar bioactivity compare to the natural sponge as well. The purposes of this research were to extract secondary metabolites from natural and cultured sea-sponges (Haliclona molitba and Stylotella aurantium), and to evaluate their antimicrobial, hemolysis, and hemagglutination activities with differentiation (?) on cultured and natural sponges. Aquadest and methanol were used as solvents on this research. Methods were used to determine the antimicrobial activity using the round disc diffusion. Hemolysis and hemagglutination assays utilized red blood from Deutsch Democratic Yokohama (DDY) mice. Hemagglutination and hemolysis results were measured with a microplate reader. The extraction yield of natural sponge was not significantly different from cultured one. The aqueous extract resulted in higher yield than methanolic extract. As antimicrobial activity, Bacillus cereus was the most sensitive against the crude extracts either from the natural and cultured sponges among all tested bacteria. Although both types of sponges did not show hemolysis activity, they showed hemogglutination activity.