Pigments from Soil Bacteria and Their Therapeutic Properties: A Mini Review

Abstract

Advancement in research on dyes obtained from natural sources e.g., plants, animals, insects and micro-organisms is widening the application of natural dyes in various fields. The natural dyes substituted their synthetic analogs at the beginning of twentieth century due to their improved quality, value, ease of production, ease of dyeing and some other factors. This era of dominance ended soon when toxic effects of synthetic dyes were reported. In the last few decades, pigments from micro-organisms especially soil derived bacteria is replacing dyes from other natural sources because of the increasing demand for safe, non-toxic, and biodegradable natural product. Apart from application in agriculture practices, cosmetics, textile, food and paper industries, bacterial pigments have additional biological activities e.g., anti-tumor, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, immunosuppressive anti-viral, and many more which make them a potential candidate for pharmaceutical industry. Optimization of culture conditions and fermentation medium is the key strategies for large scale production of these natural dyes. An effort has been done to give an overview of pigments obtained from bacteria of soil origin, their dominance over dyes from other sources (natural and synthetic) and applications in the medical world in the underlying study.

Production and Potential Applications of Bioconversion of Chitin and Protein-Containing Fishery Byproducts into Prodigiosin: A Review

“…PG produced by S. marcescens has been considered as a promising aim for drug development due to the described antifungal, immunosuppressive, and antiproliferative bioactivities. Hence, the culture conditions for large-scale production to ameliorate PG productivity becomes an essential issue [ 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 147 ]. To gain higher PG productivity, important factors for evaluation include the media composition, inorganic phosphate availability, temperature, and pH [ 199 , 200 ].…”

“…The environmental pollution concerns raised because of the use of chemically synthetic pigment have led to increasing interest in the natural ones. Microbial pigments have lately attracted increasing attention in textile dyeing because of their sustainability and cleaner production [ 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 151 , 152 , 169 , 210 ]. Recently, PG has become a research hotspot for its bright colors and antibacterial function.…”

“…Pigments of microbial origin have received much more attention in recent studies due to their versatile applications in agriculture, food, cosmetics, textile, and pharmacy. The antimicrobial, anti-cancer, and anti-parasite bioactivities confer the bacterial pigments with the potential to be developed as pharmaceutical products [ 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 ]. The worldwide concern recently has been to extend inclination towards the use of natural materials in place of artificial ones because of several advantages including concerns over environmentally-friendly sustenance [ 77 , 79 ].…”

Multifaceted Applications of Microbial Pigments: Current Knowledge, Challenges and Future Directions for Public Health Implications

“…Regardless of their role in the environment, they offer several benefits to humanity; one such benefit is pigment production by several microbes, of which deserved importance is being highlighted in recent times, and there are still more untapped sources to explore many unknown pigmented compounds [2]. The importance of microbial pigments has been emphasized in different applications, such as cosmetics, food, pharmaceuticals, and textiles, and these compounds are also well-known to exhibit cytotoxic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, antimalarial, anticancer, antitumor, and antifouling activities [3,4,5,6,7].…”

Antibacterial Activity of Marine Bacterial Pigments Obtained from Arabian Sea Water Samples

“…However, none of these three pigments showed inhibitory effect on MCF-7 cells as compared to compared to the untreated control. In addition to antibacterial property of the extracted pigments, red and purple pigments are also known to have colorfastness property and hence, these pigments can be used as colorant for fabrics in textile industry as a safe and eco-friendly colorant to replace harmful synthetic dye 27 .…”