Chemoecological Screening Reveals High Bioactivity in Diverse Culturable Portuguese Marine Cyanobacteria

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2013

Authors

Pedro Leão (Author) Other; Vitor Ramos (Author) Other; Patrício Gonçalves (Author) Other; Flávia Viana (Author) Other; Olga Lage (Author) Other; William Gerwick (Author) Other; Vitor Vasconcelos (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Marine Drugs

Vol. 11

Pages: 1316-1335

ISSN: 1660-3397

Publisher: MDPI

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 16 Citations

Scopus - 16 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-005-1X5

DOI: 10.3390/md11041316

Abstract (EN): Marine cyanobacteria, notably those from tropical regions, are a rich source of bioactive secondary metabolites. Tropical marine cyanobacteria often grow to high densities in the environment, allowing direct isolation of many secondary metabolites from field-collected material. However, in temperate environments culturing is usually required to produce enough biomass for investigations of their chemical constituents. In this work, we cultured a selection of novel and diverse cyanobacteria isolated from the Portuguese coast, and tested their organic extracts in a series of ecologically-relevant bioassays. The majority of the extracts showed activity in at least one of the bioassays, all of which were run in very small scale. Phylogenetically related isolates exhibited different activity profiles, highlighting the value of microdiversity for bioprospection studies. Furthermore, LC-MS analyses of selected active extracts suggested the presence of previously unidentified secondary metabolites. Overall, the screening strategy employed here, in which previously untapped cyanobacterial diversity was combined with multiple bioassays, proved to be a successful strategy and allowed the selection of several strains for further investigations based on their bioactivity profiles.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 20