Bioactivity Screening and Gene-Trait Matching across Marine Sponge-Associated Bacteria

Abstract

Marine sponges harbor diverse microbial communities that represent a significant source of natural products. In the present study, extracts of 21 sponge-associated bacteria were screened for their antimicrobial and anticancer activity, and their genomes were mined for secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Phylogenetic analysis assigned the strains to four major phyla in the sponge microbiome, namely Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes. Bioassays identified one extract with anti-methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) activity, and more than 70% of the total extracts had a moderate to high cytotoxicity. The most active extracts were derived from the Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, prominent for producing bioactive substances. The strong bioactivity potential of the aforementioned strains was also evident in the abundance of BGCs, which encoded mainly beta-lactones, bacteriocins, non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS), terpenes, and siderophores. Gene-trait matching was performed for the most active strains, aiming at linking their biosynthetic potential with the experimental results. Genetic associations were established for the anti-MRSA and cytotoxic phenotypes based on the similarity of the detected BGCs with BGCs encoding natural products with known bioactivity. Overall, our study highlights the significance of combining in vitro and in silico approaches in the search of novel natural products of pharmaceutical interest.

Bioprospecting Antiproliferative Marine Microbiota From Submarine Volcano Tagoro

“…Our results reveal the extracts of Micromonospora AR22-02 (Actinobacteria), Kangiella AR14-04 and Pseudoalteromonas AR04-01 (Gammaproteobacteria), and Halobacillus, AR14-06 and AR01-01 (Firmicutes) as the most active under the studied conditions, and support the previous suggestion that most anticancer molecules produced by marine bacteria are derived from Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria (Gammaproteobacteria), and Firmicutes (Gavriilidou et al, 2021). In this sense, a large group of anticancer peptides and some small molecules have been obtained from bacteria occurring in marine sediments comprising genera as Bacillus, Halobacillus, and Paenibacillus (Karpiñski and Adamczak, 2018).…”

Development of Marine-Derived Compounds for Cancer Therapy

“…Compared to traditional natural product discovery, this novel approach was time saving, accurate and promising [180]. Moreover, the omics approaches can also be used to predict the molecular target and biological mode of natural compounds, which was illustrated by the marine anticancer compound rhizochalinin [181] and marine spongeassociated bacteria [182].…”

Marine Bacterial Secondary Metabolites: A Treasure House for Structurally Unique and Effective Antimicrobial Compounds

“…Marine organisms have provided essential components that have shown their potential for use in industrial development as agrochemicals, as well as in cosmetics, fine chemicals, nutritional supplements, and as therapeutic agents for treating several illnesses [56]. Over the last 25 years, the discipline of marine drug discovery has expanded with over 35,000 research articles on natural chemical compounds derived from marine origins [57]. This is also shown by the rapid discovery of new secondary metabolites and a large number of marine-derived therapeutic candidates in clinical trials or awaiting approval [58,59].…”