Abstract
BackgroundMarine ecosystems are hosts to a vast array of organisms, being among the most richly biodiverse locations on the planet. The study of these ecosystems is very important, as they are not only a significant source of food for the world but also have, in recent years, become a prolific source of compounds with therapeutic potential. Studies of aspects of marine life have involved diverse fields of marine science, and the use of metabolomics as an experimental approach has increased in recent years. As part of the “omics” technologies, metabolomics has been used to deepen the understanding of interactions between marine organisms and their environment at a metabolic level and to discover new metabolites produced by these organisms.Aim of reviewThis review provides an overview of the use of metabolomics in the study of marine organisms. It also explores the use of metabolomics tools common to other fields such as plants and human metabolomics that could potentially contribute to marine organism studies. It deals with the entire process of a metabolomic study, from sample collection considerations, metabolite extraction, analytical techniques, and data analysis. It also includes an overview of recent applications of metabolomics in fields such as marine ecology and drug discovery and future perspectives of its use in the study of marine organisms.Key scientific concepts of reviewThe review covers all the steps involved in metabolomic studies of marine organisms including, collection, extraction methods, analytical tools, statistical analysis, and dereplication. It aims to provide insight into all aspects that a newcomer to the field should consider when undertaking marine metabolomics.
Highlights
Oceans cover most of the earth’s surface, and they are a great source of biodiversity (Cragg & Newman, 2009)
Knowledge of marine organisms and their ecosystems has been rapidly increasing over the past decades, with more species and thousands of new molecules reported every year, the scale of unexplored organisms is thought to be astounding
Even with the developments in technologies such as SCUBA diving, remote operated vehicles (ROVs)’s (Remotely operated vehicles), and research submersibles, which allow a study of the environment that could not even be imagined in
Summary
Oceans cover most of the earth’s surface, and they are a great source of biodiversity (Cragg & Newman, 2009). The collection of significant amounts of sample is often complicated by an extremely low availability, due to their natural scarcity but to the difficulties encountered when accessing the most often remote collection sites and/or in their transportation in appropriate conditions to laboratories Another challenging aspect for the study of marine organisms is inherent to their chemistry since the chemical space occupied for the metabolites isolated from marine organisms is quite broad (Blunt et al, 2018). This paper reviews all the required steps in the workflow of marine organism metabolomics based on recent studies: sample preparation including extraction, data analysis, and metabolite identification It provides examples of the application of metabolomics to a large diversity of organisms and the discussion of scientific and technological advances. It is still too early to propose general guidelines for optimum conditions to extract a wider range of marine organism metabolites
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