Chemically Diverse and Biologically Active Secondary Metabolites from Marine Phylum chlorophyta

Abstract

For a long time, algal chemistry from terrestrial to marine or freshwater bodies, especially chlorophytes, has fascinated numerous investigators to develop new drugs in the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries. As such, chlorophytes comprise a diverse structural class of secondary metabolites, having functional groups that are specific to a particular source. All bioactive compounds of chlorophyte are of great interest due to their supplemental/nutritional/pharmacological activities. In this review, a detailed description of the chemical diversity of compounds encompassing alkaloids, terpenes, steroids, fatty acids and glycerides, their subclasses and their structures are discussed. These promising natural products have efficiency in developing new drugs necessary in the treatment of various deadly pathologies (cancer, HIV, SARS-CoV-2, several inflammations, etc.). Marine chlorophyte, therefore, is portrayed as a pivotal treasure in the case of drugs having marine provenience. It is a domain of research expected to probe novel pharmaceutically or nutraceutically important secondary metabolites resulting from marine Chlorophyta. In this regard, our review aims to compile the isolated secondary metabolites having diverse chemical structures from chlorophytes (like Caulerpa ssp., Ulva ssp., Tydemania ssp., Penicillus ssp., Codium ssp., Capsosiphon ssp., Avrainvillea ssp.), their biological properties, applications and possible mode of action.

Bioactive Compounds, Cosmeceutical And Nutraceutical Applications of Green Seaweed Species (Chlorophyta)

“…are made up of ulvan. It is a sulfated polysaccharide that consists of a central framework of disaccharide modules, Lrhamnose 3-sulphate, which is linked to (i) ulvabiouronic acid unit A; (ii) ulvabiuronic acid unit B; (iii) ulvabiose unit A; or (iv) ulvabiose unit B (Shah et al, 2020). Moreover, ulvan is mainly composed of variable amounts of rhamnose, glucuronic acid, iduronic acid, xylose and high level of charged sulfated polyelectrolytes (Figueira et al, 2020;Aizatul et al, 2021).…”

“…offered a wide range of nutraceutical and pharmacological applications since they have the capacity to manufacture ulvans moieties of different sugar units (Cunha & Grenha, 2016). For instance, a low molecular weight (28.2 kDa) ulvans of U. pertusa exhibited high inhibitory activity against hydroxyl and superoxide radicals, also showed a strong reduction capacity and metal chelating properties (Shah et al, 2020). Thus, these properties can be further exploited in the industries for their powerful antioxidant agents.…”

“…Chlorophyta is also known to become a main source of secondary metabolites, which benefits humans in combating various pathogens (Levasseur, Patrick, & Victor, 2020). According to recent research, Ulva and Caulerpa have shown multiple bioactivities such as antibacterial, antitumor, antiviral and anti-inflammatory due to the presence of secondary metabolites (Shah et al, 2020). Among the secondary metabolites available in Chlorophyta are phenols, alkaloids and terpenes.…”

“…Among the secondary metabolites available in Chlorophyta are phenols, alkaloids and terpenes. Caulerpa was one of the genera reported to contain phenolic compounds (tannins and flavonoids), terpenes and steroids (Shah et al, 2020).…”

Systematic metabolome profiling and multi-omics analysis of the nitrogen-limited non-model oleaginous algae for biorefining

“…Microalgae photosynthesize sunlight and carbon dioxide to energy-rich biomolecules, triacylglycerol (TAG), transesterifiable into biodiesel. In addition to biodiesel production, microalgae sequester greenhouse gases (Ono and Cuello, 2007;Packer, 2009), pivotal in circumventing climate change, are capable of bioremediating wastewaters (Markou and Georgakakis, 2011; Rawat et al, 2011), and synthesizing high-value pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals as co-products (Raja et al, 2008;Shah et al, 2020). Several microalgae genera such as Phaeodactylum (Molina Grima et al, 1999), Nannochloropsis (Sukenik, 1999), Porphyridium (Su et al, 2016), Schizochytrium (Morita et al, 2006), and Chlorella (Levasseur et al, 2020), are cultivated heterotrophically for the production of high-value products.…”