The oceans encompass a wide range of habitats and environmental conditions, which host a huge microbial biodiversity. The unique characteristics of several marine systems have driven a variety of biological adaptations, leading to the production of a large spectrum of bioactive molecules. Fungi, fungi-like protists (such as thraustochytrids) and bacteria are among the marine organisms with the ...

Marine biodiscovery or bioprospecting activity is a search for marine products derived from marine biodiversity that can be developed for various industrial needs. Including in this activity is the process of identifying chemical compounds made by biological organisms which is often called natural product discovery. Indonesia, well known as a mega-diversity country, is one of the world hot spor...

Developing high-throughput assays to screen marine extracts for bioactive compounds presents both conceptual and technical challenges. One major challenge is to develop assays that have well-grounded ecological and evolutionary rationales. In this review we propose that a specific group of ligand-activated transcription factors are particularly well-suited to act as sensors in such bioassays. M...

The major groups of biochemical compounds (proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, chitin, nucleic acids and nucleotides) have a distinct functional role and, therefore, incorporation of biochemical interpretations into stoichiometric analysis would improve our current understanding of species life histories and their interactions. A review of the stoichiometric composition of the main biochemical com...

Recently, the studies on the prevention and treatment of human papillomavirus (HPV) which is closely related to the cervical cancer and other genital diseases are attracting more and more attention all over the world. Marine-derived polysaccharides and other bioactive compounds have been shown to possess a variety of anti-HPV and related cancer activities. This paper will review the recent prog...

Generation of immense quantity of underutilized marine processing byproducts has long been recognized as wastes and greater efforts were given to use these materials in various applications. With a great number of researches on these byproducts, some biologically active compounds were identified and applicated to the useful compounds for human utilization. Potential applications of proteins, li...

BACKGROUND Beta-glucosidase inhibitors are being extensively studied for use as anti-diabetics, anti-obesity and anti-tumour compounds. So far, these compounds have been reported in large numbers from plants, mushrooms, algae and fungi. There are very few reports of such inhibitors from bacteria in the open literature, particularly marine bacteria; although the best known inhibitor deoxynojirim...

Marine microorganisms widely distributed on our oceans of the earth and emerging as the great source for the discovery of natural products. Marine Actinomycetes are virtually unlimited sources of novel compounds with many therapeutic applications and hold a prominent position due to their diversity and proven ability to produce novel bioactive compounds. Actinomycetes represent a high proportio...

The peer-reviewed marine pharmacology literature from 2009 to 2011 is presented in this review, following the format used in the 1998-2008 reviews of this series. The pharmacology of structurally-characterized compounds isolated from marine animals, algae, fungi and bacteria is discussed in a comprehensive manner. Antibacterial, antifungal, antiprotozoal, antituberculosis, and antiviral pharmac...

Halogenated natural products are frequently reported metabolites in marine seaweeds. These compounds span a range from halogenated indoles, terpenes, acetogenins, phenols, etc., to volatile halogenated hydrocarbons that are produced on a very large scale. In many cases these halogenated marine metabolites possess biological activities of pharmacological interest. Given the abundance of halogena...