The Pharmacological Potential of Non-ribosomal Peptides from Marine Sponge and Tunicates

Abstract

Marine biodiversity is recognized by a wide and unique array of fascinating structures. The complex associations of marine microorganisms, especially with sponges, bryozoans, and tunicates, make it extremely difficult to define the biosynthetic source of marine natural products or to deduce their ecological significance. Marine sponges and tunicates are important source of novel compounds for drug discovery and development. Majority of these compounds are nitrogen containing and belong to non-ribosomal peptide (NRPs) or mixed polyketide–NRP natural products. Several of these peptides are currently under trial for developing new drugs against various disease areas, including inflammatory, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, and infectious disease. This review features pharmacologically active NRPs from marine sponge and tunicates based on their biological activities.

Comparative genomics reveals complex natural product biosynthesis capacities and carbon metabolism across host‐associated and free‐living Aquimarina (Bacteroidetes, Flavobacteriaceae) species

“…Given its recent structural elucidation and purification in the laboratory, it is likely that bioactivities for cuniculene and structurally related compounds will soon be revealed. As polyketides, NRPs are of utmost interest for the field of drug discovery and their potential biosynthesis has been often reported from symbiotic microbial communities (Agrawal et al, 2016;Raimundo et al, 2018). Among NRPs are more than 20 marketed drugs with antimicrobial, antitumoural and immunosuppressant activity (Sussmuth and Mainz, 2017), encouraging further studies of compounds from diverse microorganisms and isolation sources.…”

Deep-Sea Fungi Could Be the New Arsenal for Bioactive Molecules

“…Scientists are interested in the extraction of novel and unique natural products, having clinical importance, from different organisms living in the extreme environments. In addition to terrestrial extreme environments, the ocean could also be considered a good reservoir of bioactive metabolites [1][2][3][4]. Fungi living in the deep-sea environments are known to produce novel bioactive compounds.…”

Chemoenzymatic synthesis of polypeptides containing the unnatural amino acid 2-aminoisobutyric acid

“…Integrating unnatural amino acids into the polypeptide backbones enables the fabrication of novel functionalities by altering their structures; 1,2 similarly, natural living systems incorporate rare amino acids such as N-methylglycine and selenocysteine into proteins for specific functions. 3,4 The introduction of a,a-disubstituted amino acids into polypeptide architectures is a powerful way to control their secondary structures. 5,6 2-Aminoisobutyric acid (Aib), one of the unnatural amino acids, is known to be a strong helical promoter when it is incorporated into a polypeptide sequence.…”