Marine Biotechnology and Its Applications in Drug Discovery

Abstract

The Ocean is the largest biome on our planet Earth with the greatest extremities of temperature and climatic conditions. High ionic concentrations, high pressures and both low and high temperatures define this particular environment. Marine (Blue) biotechnology is the use of biological resources from the ocean for industrial, medical or environmental purposes. Marine Biotechnology can also be defined as a cutting-edge era of science and technology that majorly focuses on marine resources to support living creatures. Due to the ecologically and environmentally diverse sea environment, the planet’s most chemically varied ecosystem, marine biotechnology, has been recently known to produce an increasing number of key medicinal goods, industrial and environmental tools and applications for varied research analysis. This book delves deeper into the prospective use of marine biotechnology for drug discovery, including the development of enzymes, antibiotics and biopolymers, substances derived from various marine sources. In fact, the potential for natural products offered by marine microbial biodiversity appears to be endless and vast expanding as new methods of measurement are being developed. One of the prerequisite factors for successful innovation in exploiting the enormous diversity of marine life is high-quality research in the field of marine biotechnology.