Emerging Concepts Promising New Horizons for Marine Biodiscovery and Synthetic Biology

Abstract

The vast oceans of the world, which comprise a huge variety of unique ecosystems, are emerging as a rich and relatively untapped source of novel bioactive compounds with invaluable biotechnological and pharmaceutical potential. Evidence accumulated over the last decade has revealed that the diversity of marine microorganisms is enormous with many thousands of bacterial species detected that were previously unknown. Associated with this diversity is the production of diverse repertoires of bioactive compounds ranging from peptides and enzymes to more complex secondary metabolites that have significant bioactivity and thus the potential to be exploited for innovative biotechnology. Here we review the discovery and functional potential of marine bioactive peptides such as lantibiotics, nanoantibiotics and peptidomimetics, which have received particular attention in recent years in light of their broad spectrum of bioactivity. The significance of marine peptides in cell-to-cell communication and how this may be exploited in the discovery of novel bioactivity is also explored. Finally, with the recent advances in bioinformatics and synthetic biology, it is becoming clear that the integration of these disciplines with genetic and biochemical characterization of the novel marine peptides, offers the most potential in the development of the next generation of societal solutions.

Antibacterial and antioxidant activities of differential solvent extractions from the green seaweed Ulva intestinalis

“…Some of these compounds have medical applications since they contain antibacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities [1][2][3][4] . Because green seaweeds have relatively low toxicity and high bioactivities 5 , they can be used as foods, and their extracts as fertilizers and pharmaceuticals 1 .…”

An Overview on Marine Sponge-Symbiotic Bacteria as Unexhausted Sources for Natural Product Discovery

“…Heterologous gene expression has been identified as an enormous challenge that limits the confidence of metagenomics approaches to access the full metabolic potential of biosynthetic pathways [209][210][211]. The biosynthetic PKS and NRPS gene clusters also require specific induction in order to obtain a specific metabolite and without these inducing conditions, metabolites may be unexpressed [212,213], and even if the expression of a particular gene pathway is successful it may not produce the same or all of the expected metabolites [52,202].…”

Identification of an Esterase Isolated Using Metagenomic Technology which Displays an Unusual Substrate Scope and its Characterisation as an Enantioselective Biocatalyst

“…[16] The marine environment, which has bestowed upon us many pharmaceutically interesting natural products, has proven to be a rich source of protein diversity. [11,17]…”