Chemosystematic evaluation of Amazonian freshwater sponges

Abstract

Freshwater sponges had been considered a promising new source of bioactive compounds for the pharmaceutical industry, with still incipient research on their chemical composition. We evaluated Amazonian most endemic freshwater sponges´ species from Drulia and Metania genera by untargeted metabolomic approaches based on UHPCL-HRMS in order to identify its chemical markers and explore their diversity of specialized metabolites. The use of untargeted approaches allowed us to observe the subsets of metabolites capable to characterize not only each genus but also to evaluate each species. Freshwater sponges species presented themselves as rich sources of fatty acids and sterols, that were putatively identified. These metabolites were suggested as chemical markers for further targeted metabolomic studies.