Abstract
Marine invertebrates represent a vast, untapped source of bioactive compounds. Cnidarians are represented by nearly 10,000 species that contain a complex mixture of venoms, collagen, and other bioactive compounds, including enzymes, oligosaccharides, fatty acids, and lipophilic molecules. Due to their high abundance in coastal waters, several jellyfish taxa may be regarded as candidate targets for the discovery of novel lead molecules and biomaterials and as a potential source of food/feed ingredients. The moon jellyfish Aurelia coerulea is one of the most common jellyfish worldwide and is particularly abundant in sheltered coastal lagoons and marinas of the Mediterranean Sea, where it first appeared—as an alien species—in the last century, when Pacific oyster cultivation began. In the present study, the antioxidant and lysozyme antibacterial activities associated with extracts from different medusa compartments—namely the umbrella, oral arms, and secreted mucus—were investigated. Extracts from the oral arms of A. coerulea displayed significant antioxidant activity. Similarly, lysozyme-like activity was the highest in extracts from oral arms. These findings suggest that A. coerulea outbreaks may be used in the search for novel cytolytic and cytotoxic products against marine bacteria. The geographically wide occurrence and the seasonally high abundance of A. coerulea populations in coastal waters envisage and stimulate the search for biotechnological applications of jellyfish biomasses in the pharmaceutical, nutritional, and nutraceutical sectors.
Highlights
Marine invertebrates represent a source of bioactive compounds that are generally used as defensive barriers against predators, parasites, and microbial pathogens or as messengers for intraspecific and interspecific communication
Peptides derived from the pepsinhydrolysed proteins of R. pulmo show remarkable antioxidant activity that is inversely proportional to the peptide molecular weight (MW), with low MW peptides being effective against oxidative stress in human epidermal keratinocyte (HEKa) cell cultures [11]
In A. coerulea, we demonstrated that conspicuous antioxidant activity was exerted by oral arms and umbrella tissues; antioxidant compounds seem more concentrated in the oral arms despite the low content of both proteins and phenolic compounds
Summary
Marine invertebrates represent a source of bioactive compounds that are generally used as defensive barriers against predators, parasites, and microbial pathogens or as messengers for intraspecific and interspecific communication. Cnidarians are a large taxonomic group that is constituted by nearly 10,000 marine species that are characterized by highly specialized mechano-sensory cells (cnidocytes) containing proteinaceous venomous mixtures that are used both for both prey capture and defence against predators. Several toxic compounds isolated from cnidarian body extracts have bioactive (e.g., hemolytic and cytolytic) properties [3], and their action mechanisms are not always fully understood [4]. Several compounds with multiple biological properties have been isolated from the different body parts and components (e.g., tentacles, oral arms, umbrella, and secreted mucus) of several scyphozoan jellyfish [5,6,7]. The antioxidant properties of R. esculentum extracts are responsible of an in vivo photoprotection ability [12,13]
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