Chemoecological Screening Reveals High Bioactivity in Diverse Culturable Portuguese Marine Cyanobacteria

Marine Drugs

Pedro N. Leão¹  Vitor Ramos¹  Patrໜio B. Gon๺lves¹  Flávia Viana³  Olga M. Lage¹  William H. Gerwick² 

[1] CIMAR/CIIMAR—Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Rua dos Bragas 177, Porto 4050-123, Portugal; E-Mails:;Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, Porto 4169-007, Portugal; E-Mails:

关键词: cyanobacteria;    chemical ecology;    screening;    bioactive compounds;    secondary metabolites;    phylogenetic analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/md11041316

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.