Marine Microorganisms Bioprospecting

A special issue of Marine Drugs (ISSN 1660-3397). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Biotechnology Related to Drug Discovery or Production".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 694

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
Interests: marine fungi; marine natural products; pharmacological mechanism

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Guest Editor
South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
Interests: marine-derived actinomycete; genome mining; secondary metabolites; natural product biosynthesis; biocatalysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Marine microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and microalgae, are recognized as important sources of pharmacologically active metabolites. Marine habitats, such as the deep sea, hydrothermal vents, cold springs, and polar regions, have led marine microorganisms to evolve unique metabolic pathways to cope with the conditions related to special environments of high competition. The utilization of bioactive compounds from marine microorganisms as health products results in a crucial advancement in the field of healthcare and wellness. With the advent of new analytical methods and multi-omics technologies, the current screening for promising natural products and their research and development in the pharmaceutical pipeline have increased. More and more new enzymatic and pharmacological mechanisms of active metabolites from marine microorganisms are expected to be revealed.

This Special Issue aims to collect papers on the most recent findings in the field of “Marine Microorganisms Bioprospecting”. We are interested in new data on the new collection of marine microbial resources, isolation, structural identification, modification, activity screening, and biosynthetic pathways of secondary metabolites as well as their pharmacological mechanisms. Comprehensive review papers of the latest active compounds of marine microbial origin are also welcome.

Dr. Junfeng Wang
Dr. Qingbo Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • marine microorganisms
  • marine natural products
  • bioactivity screening
  • structure-activity relationship
  • genome mining
  • natural product biosynthesis
  • biocatalysis
  • metabolic engineering
  • synthetic biology
  • pharmacological mechanisms

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 2686 KiB  
Article
Genome Mining-Guided Discovery of Two New Depsides from Talaromyces sp. HDN1820200
by Xiao Zhang, Luyang Liu, Jiani Huang, Xingtao Ren, Guojian Zhang, Qian Che, Dehai Li and Tianjiao Zhu
Mar. Drugs 2025, 23(3), 130; https://doi.org/10.3390/md23030130 - 18 Mar 2025
Viewed by 542
Abstract
Depsides and their derivatives are a class of polyketides predominantly found in fungal extracts. Herein, a silent nonreducing polyketide synthase (TalsA)-containing gene cluster, which was identified from the Antarctic sponge-derived fungus Talaromyces sp. HDN1820200, was successfully activated through heterologous expression in Aspergillus nidulans [...] Read more.
Depsides and their derivatives are a class of polyketides predominantly found in fungal extracts. Herein, a silent nonreducing polyketide synthase (TalsA)-containing gene cluster, which was identified from the Antarctic sponge-derived fungus Talaromyces sp. HDN1820200, was successfully activated through heterologous expression in Aspergillus nidulans. This activation led to the production of two novel depsides, talaronic acid A (1) and B (2), alongside three known compounds (35). The further co-expression of TalsA with the decarboxylase (TalsF) demonstrated that it could convert 2 into its decarboxylated derivative 1. The structural elucidation of these compounds was achieved using comprehensive 1D and 2D-NMR spectroscopy, which was complemented by HR-MS analysis. Talaronic acids A and B were firstly reported heterodimers of 3-methylorsellinic acid (3-MOA) and 5-methylorsellinic acid (5-MOA). All isolated compounds (15) were tested for their anti-inflammatory potential. Notably, compounds 1 and 2 exhibited anti-inflammatory activity comparable to that of the positive control. These results further enrich the structural class of depside natural products. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Microorganisms Bioprospecting)
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