Bioprospecting of Marine Invertebrates for New Natural Products — A Chemical and Zoogeographical Perspective

Abstract

Bioprospecting for new marine natural products (NPs) has increased significantly over the last decades, leading to an unprecedented discovery of new molecules. Marine invertebrates have been the most important source of these NPs, with researchers commonly targeting particular taxonomic groups, marine regions and/or molecules from specific chemical groups. The present review focuses on new NPs identified from marine invertebrates between 2000 and 2009, and performs a detailed analysis on: (1) the chemical groups of these NPs; (2) the association of particular chemical groups to specific marine invertebrate taxa; and (3) the yielding of molecules from the same chemical group from organisms occurring in a particular geographic region. Our survey revealed an increasing number of new terpenoids being discovered between 2000 and 2009, contrasting with the decreasing trend in the discovery of new alkaloids and aliphatic molecules. Overall, no particular association was identified between marine invertebrate taxa and chemical groups of new NPs. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that most NPs recorded from cnidarians and mollusks were terpenoids, while most NPs identified in echinoderms were aliphatic compounds or carbohydrates. The geographical trends observed in our study do not support the idea of particular chemical groups of new NPs being associated with marine invertebrates from any specific geographical region, as NPs from different chemical groups were commonly distributed worldwide.

Chemical and biological aspects of octocorals from the Brazilian coast

“…Nevertheless, in the past few years, deep-water species from less diverse environments, such as temperate and Antarctic seas, have also led to the discovery of some interesting compounds (Rodríguez Brasco et al, 2007). Octocorals from tropical and temperate waters have been a prolific source of novel secondary metabolites, most of them derived from the mevalonate pathway, such as terpenoid and steroidal derivatives (Blunt et al, 2005;Rocha et al, 2011;Leal et al, 2012). Notably, the families Gorgoniidae and Plexauridae, the most abundant in Brazil, have been demonstrated to contain a wide variety of compounds including steroids, acetogenins, sesquiterpenes and diterpenes.…”

Publication impact in sponge chemical and microbial ecology

“…The vast majority of studies in chemical ecology deal with the biological activity of natural products from sponges (Wright et al 2011, Freeman and Gleason 2012, Nuñez-Pons et al 2012 and their biotechnological potential (Leal et al 2012a, b, Acevedo et al 2013, Kampa et al 2013). However, sponges harbour complex microbial communities that must be taken into consideration in the ecology research field.…”

“…Today's major themes in sponge chemical ecology are to test the bioactivity of natural products regardless of the origin of these metabolites (Wright et al 2011, Freeman and Gleason 2012, Nuñez-Pons et al 2012 and to screen for new drugs with potential pharmacological and biotechnological applications (Leal et al 2012a,b, Acevedo et al 2013, Kampa et al 2013). There are several papers about the variability of bioactive compounds at multiple temporal and spatial scales (Sacristán-Soriano et al 2011a, 2012, Evans-Illidge et al 2013) and many others that link host metabolites with symbionts from the sponge (Hochmuth et al 2010, Penesyan et al 2010, Indraningrat et al 2016.…”

Cytotoxic Activity and Secondary Metabolite Characteristics of Sea Cucumber Actinopyga sp. Methanolic Extract

“…In the last ten years, secondary metabolites that are considered as lead compounds have been developed into risk-reducing chronic disease medicine (Webb, 2006;Shahidi, 2009;Bordbar et al, 2011). Sea cucumber is considered as one of marine invertebrates that have the diversity of secondary metabolites (Leal et al, 2012).…”