Antibacterials from the Sea

Abstract

The ocean contains a host of macroscopic life in a great microbial soup. Unlike the terrestrial environment, an aqueous environment provides perpetual propinquity and blurs spatial distinctions. Marine organisms are under a persistent threat of infection by resident pathogenic microbes including bacteria, and in response they have engineered complex organic compounds with antibacterial activity from a diverse set of biological precursors. The diluting effect of the ocean drives the construction of potent molecules that are stable to harsh salty conditions. Members of each class of metabolite—ribosomal and non-ribosomal peptides, alkaloids, polyketides, and terpenes—have been shown to exhibit antibacterial activity. The sophistication and diversity of these metabolites points to the ingenuity and flexibility of biosynthetic processes in Nature. Compared with their terrestrial counterparts, antibacterial marine natural products have received much less attention. Thus, a concerted effort to discover new antibacterials from marine sources has the potential to contribute significantly to the treatment of the ever increasing drug-resistant infectious diseases.

Pharmacological Properties of the Marine Natural Product Marinopyrrole A against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

“…Beginning with the introduction of penicillin, natural products have provided diverse chemical scaffolds leading to 9 of the 12 classes of antibiotics currently used in the clinic (1,8,12). The majority of these bioactive secondary metabolites are derived from terrestrial actinomycete bacteria.…”

“…The majority of these bioactive secondary metabolites are derived from terrestrial actinomycete bacteria. Although much less explored than terrestrial environments, the ocean has been shown to be a bountiful source of biological and genetic diversity (9) that leads to chemically novel natural products (8,12).…”

Red Sea Microbial Diversity for Antimicrobial and Anticancer Agents

“…Marine-derived metabolites, like peptides (ribosomal and non-ribosomal), alkaloids, polyketides and terpenes, have demonstrated antimicrobial and antiviral activities [13,14]. Most of marine-derived microorganisms are characterized by unique physiochemical properties, which can help them to easily adapt to extreme habitats, and to tolerate the extreme conditions like high pH, temperature, pressure, oxygen level, light, nutrients limit, salinity and osmolality [15].…”

Selective Killing of Dormant Mycobacterium tuberculosis by Marine Natural Products

“…The chemical diversity may be amplified for marine natural products due to the vast biodiversity encountered in marine environments (24). Also, bioactive secondary metabolites produced by marine organisms to fight parasitic microorganisms are often very potent, since they rapidly become diluted in the environment (25). Many antimicrobial compounds with activity against M. tuberculosis have been isolated from marine organisms, although very few have moved beyond initial hit identification (23,26).…”