A large scale investigation of approximately 300 freshwater and 200 marine eukaryotic algal, and 70 freshwater and 10 marine cyanobacterial cultures has been carried out to identify the presence of protease inhibitors. Culture filtrates and methanol extracts of algae were screened, mainly using rapid, colorimetric, microtitre plate asays, for inhibitors of the following enzymes; carboxypeptidase A, n-chymotrypsin, collagenase, elastase, leucine aminopeptidase, papain, and trypsin. Enzyme inhibition was detected from 39 species of algae. The enzyme against which most inhibitors were discovered, was papain. Almost all the activities were found in the methanol extracts. This is the first report of the discovery of enzyme inhibitors from algae. Our results suggest that microalgae have potential as a source of novel natural products with possible clinical applications.
Algae are a large and diverse group of organisms from which a wide range of secondary metabolites have been isolated. A number of these compounds possess biological activity such as toxicity, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antitumour and other specific activities. An indication of the range and diversity of algal metabolites and their biological activities is given and the potential of algae as a source of useful biologically active products is discussed.
The biosynthetic origin of the carbon and oxygen atoms of the novel fungal secondary metabolite 1 was studied. Incorporation studies with single and multiple labelled 13C precursors indicated that the major portion of the molecule was derived from two polyketide chains madeup of acetate units. One of the chains had benzoic acid (which can be derived from phenylalanine) as a starter unit. The remaining carbons were derived from a four-carbon unit related to succinate and from methionine.Studies with [l-13C,18O2]acetate and 18O2 indicated that five of the oxygens, including both of the heterocyclic oxygens, were derived from atmospheric oxygen. The oxygens at the two ester carbonyls were derived from acetate.
An alpha-glucosidase inhibitor/antibiotic was purified from the freshwater green alga Spirogyra varians and was determined to be the pentagalloylglucose 3-O-digalloyl-1,2,6-trigalloylglucose.
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