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Marine Drugs Apr 2023Marine sponges are multicellular and primitive animals that potentially represent a wealthy source of novel drugs. The genus (family Axinellidae) is renowned to produce... (Review)
Review
Marine sponges are multicellular and primitive animals that potentially represent a wealthy source of novel drugs. The genus (family Axinellidae) is renowned to produce various metabolites with various structural characteristics and bioactivities, including nitrogen-containing terpenoids, alkaloids, and sterols. The current work provides an up-to-date literature survey and comprehensive insight into the reported metabolites from the members of this genus, as well as their sources, biosynthesis, syntheses, and biological activities whenever available. In the current work, 226 metabolites have been discussed based on published data from the period from 1974 to the beginning of 2023 with 90 references.
Topics: Animals; Porifera; Alkaloids; Terpenes; Nitrogen; Biological Products
PubMed: 37103397
DOI: 10.3390/md21040257 -
Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) Mar 2023The article is a comprehensive review concerning tetracyclic triterpene and steroid glycosides from sponges (Porifera, Demospongiae). The extensive oxidative... (Review)
Review
The article is a comprehensive review concerning tetracyclic triterpene and steroid glycosides from sponges (Porifera, Demospongiae). The extensive oxidative transformations of the aglycone and the use of various monosaccharide residues, with up to six possible, are responsible for the significant structural diversity observed in sponge saponins. The saponins are specific for different genera and species but their taxonomic distribution seems to be mosaic in different orders of Demospongiae. Many of the glycosides are membranolytics and possess cytotoxic activity that may be a cause of their anti-predatory activities. All these data reveal the independent origin and parallel evolution of the glycosides in different taxa of the sponges. The information concerning chemical structures, biological activities, biological role, and taxonomic distribution of the sponge glycosides is discussed.
Topics: Animals; Porifera; Triterpenes; Glycosides; Saponins; Steroids
PubMed: 36985476
DOI: 10.3390/molecules28062503 -
Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton,... 2021To better understand the origin of animal cell types, body plans, and other morphological features, further biological knowledge and understanding are needed from...
To better understand the origin of animal cell types, body plans, and other morphological features, further biological knowledge and understanding are needed from non-bilaterian phyla, namely, Placozoa, Ctenophora, and Porifera. This chapter describes recent cell staining approaches that have been developed in three phylogenetically distinct sponge species-the homoscleromorph Oscarella lobularis, and the demosponges Amphimedon queenslandica and Lycopodina hypogea-to enable analyses of cell death, proliferation, and migration. These methods allow for a more detailed understanding of cellular behaviors and fates, and morphogenetic processes in poriferans, building on current knowledge of sponge cell biology that relies chiefly on classical (static) histological observations.
Topics: Animals; Cell Tracking; Fluorescent Antibody Technique; Optical Imaging; Porifera; Staining and Labeling
PubMed: 33074535
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0974-3_5 -
Chemical & Pharmaceutical Bulletin 2023Marine sponges are among the most primitive animals and often contain unique, biologically active compounds. Several of these compounds have played an important roles as... (Review)
Review
Marine sponges are among the most primitive animals and often contain unique, biologically active compounds. Several of these compounds have played an important roles as pharmaceutical leads for anti-cancer drugs, such as halichondrin B, which led to the development of an anti-breast cancer drug. Some compounds with remarkable biological activities are accumulated in significantly high concentrations in the sponge. How and why the marine sponges produce and accumulate bioactive natural products are long-standing questions with both biochemical and ecological implications, since in sponges, the animal-microbe symbioses are presumed to be responsible for the biosynthetic machinery, consisting of efficient enzymes and regulatory systems for the specific biological activities of medicinally relevant natural products. In this review, I focus on the chemically rich Theonellidae family sponges and discuss the biosynthesis of bioactive peptides and polyketides. In particular, the biosynthetic pathway of calyculin A suggests that crosstalk between the sponge host and bacterial symbiont confers a chemical defense system on the immobile animal-microbe holobiont.
Topics: Animals; Biological Products; Porifera; Bacteria; Peptides; Polyketides; Antineoplastic Agents
PubMed: 36596505
DOI: 10.1248/cpb.c22-00715 -
MSystems Aug 2022Marine sponges and their microbial symbiotic communities are rich sources of diverse natural products (NPs) that often display biological activity, yet little is known... (Review)
Review
Marine sponges and their microbial symbiotic communities are rich sources of diverse natural products (NPs) that often display biological activity, yet little is known about the global distribution of NPs and the symbionts that produce them. Since the majority of sponge symbionts remain uncultured, it is a challenge to characterize their NP biosynthetic pathways, assess their prevalence within the holobiont, and measure the diversity of NP biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) across sponge taxa and environments. Here, we explore the microbial biosynthetic landscapes of three high-microbial-abundance (HMA) sponges from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. This data set reveals striking novelty, with <1% of the recovered gene cluster families (GCFs) showing similarity to any characterized BGC. When zooming in on the microbial communities of each sponge, we observed higher variability of specialized metabolic and taxonomic profiles between sponge species than within species. Nonetheless, we identified conservation of GCFs, with 20% of sponge GCFs being shared between at least two sponge species and a GCF core comprised of 6% of GCFs shared across all species. Within this functional core, we identified a set of widespread and diverse GCFs encoding nonribosomal peptide synthetases that are potentially involved in the production of diversified ether lipids, as well as GCFs putatively encoding the production of highly modified proteusins. The present work contributes to the small, yet growing body of data characterizing NP landscapes of marine sponge symbionts and to the cryptic biosynthetic potential contained in this environmental niche. Marine sponges and their microbial symbiotic communities are a rich source of diverse natural products (NPs). However, little is known about the sponge NP global distribution landscape and the symbionts that produce them. Here, we make use of recently developed tools to perform untargeted mining and comparative analysis of sponge microbiome metagenomes of three sponge species in the first study considering replicate metagenomes of multiple sponge species. We present an overview of the biosynthetic diversity across these sponge holobionts, which displays extreme biosynthetic novelty. We report not only the conservation of biosynthetic and taxonomic diversity but also a core of conserved specialized metabolic pathways. Finally, we highlight several novel GCFs with unknown ecological function, and observe particularly high biosynthetic potential in and symbionts. This study paves the way toward a better understanding of the marine sponge holobionts' biosynthetic potential and the functional and ecological role of sponge microbiomes.
Topics: Animals; Porifera; Metagenome; Microbiota; Bacteria; Biological Products
PubMed: 35862823
DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00357-22 -
Marine Drugs Mar 2022In the last decades, it has been demonstrated that marine organisms are a substantial source of bioactive compounds with possible biotechnological applications. Marine... (Review)
Review
In the last decades, it has been demonstrated that marine organisms are a substantial source of bioactive compounds with possible biotechnological applications. Marine sponges, in particular those belonging to the class of Demospongiae, have been considered among the most interesting invertebrates for their biotechnological potential. In this review, particular attention is devoted to natural compounds/extracts isolated from Demospongiae and their associated microorganisms with important biological activities for pharmacological applications such as antiviral, anticancer, antifouling, antimicrobial, antiplasmodial, antifungal and antioxidant. The data here presented show that this class of sponges is an exciting source of compounds, which are worth developing into new drugs, such as avarol, a hydroquinone isolated from the marine sponge , which is used as an antitumor, antimicrobial and antiviral drug.
Topics: Animals; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Anti-Infective Agents; Aquatic Organisms; Biological Products; Biotechnology; Porifera
PubMed: 35447918
DOI: 10.3390/md20040244 -
Marine Drugs Jul 2023In reviewing a selection of recent case studies from our laboratory, we revealed some lessons learned and benefits accrued from the application of mass spectrometry...
In reviewing a selection of recent case studies from our laboratory, we revealed some lessons learned and benefits accrued from the application of mass spectrometry (MS/MS) molecular networking in the field of marine sponge natural products. Molecular networking proved pivotal to our discovery of many new natural products and even new classes of natural product, some of which were opaque to alternate dereplication and prioritization strategies. Case studies included the discovery of: (i) trachycladindoles, an exceptionally rare class of bioactive indole alkaloid previously only known from a single southern Australia sample of ; (ii) dysidealactams, an unprecedented class of sesquiterpene glycinyl-lactam and glycinyl-imide from a sp., a sponge genera often discounted as having been exhaustively studied; (iii) cacolides, an unprecedented family of sesterterpene α-methyl-γ-hydroxybutenolides from a sp., all too easily mischaracterized and deprioritized during dereplication as a well-known class of sponge sesterterpene tetronic acids; and (iv) thorectandrins, a new class of indole alkaloid which revealed unexpected insights into the chemical and biological properties of the aplysinopsins, one of the earliest and more extensively reported class of sponge natural products.
Topics: Animals; Tandem Mass Spectrometry; Sesterterpenes; Porifera; Biological Products; Indole Alkaloids
PubMed: 37504944
DOI: 10.3390/md21070413 -
Molecular Ecology Oct 2022Understanding the maintenance and origin of beta diversity is a central topic in ecology. However, the factors that drive diversity patterns and underlying processes...
Understanding the maintenance and origin of beta diversity is a central topic in ecology. However, the factors that drive diversity patterns and underlying processes remain unclear, particularly for host-prokaryotic associations. Here, beta diversity patterns were studied in five prokaryotic biotopes, namely, two high microbial abundance (HMA) sponge taxa (Xestospongia spp. and Hyrtios erectus), one low microbial abundance (LMA) sponge taxon (Stylissa carteri), sediment and seawater sampled across thousands of kilometres. Using multiple regression on distance matrices (MRM), spatial (geographic distance) and environmental (sea surface temperature and chlorophyll α concentrations) variables proved significant predictors of beta diversity in all five biotopes and together explained from 54% to 82% of variation in dissimilarity of both HMA species, 27% to 43% of variation in sediment and seawater, but only 20% of variation of the LMA S. carteri. Variance partitioning was subsequently used to partition the variation into purely spatial, purely environmental and spatially-structured environmental components. The amount of variation in dissimilarity explained by the purely spatial component was lowest for S. carteri at 11% and highest for H. erectus at 55%. The purely environmental component, in turn, only explained from 0.15% to 2.83% of variation in all biotopes. In addition to spatial and environmental variables, a matrix of genetic differences between pairs of sponge individuals also proved a significant predictor of variation in prokaryotic dissimilarity of the Xestospongia species complex. We discuss the implications of these results for the HMA-LMA dichotomy and compare the MRM results with results obtained using constrained ordination and zeta diversity.
Topics: Animals; Bacteria; Biodiversity; Chlorophyll; Humans; Phylogeny; Porifera; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; Seawater
PubMed: 35881675
DOI: 10.1111/mec.16631 -
Cell and Tissue Research Sep 2019Sponges are an ancient basal life form, so understanding their evolution is key to understanding all metazoan evolution. Sponges have very unusual feeding mechanisms,... (Review)
Review
Sponges are an ancient basal life form, so understanding their evolution is key to understanding all metazoan evolution. Sponges have very unusual feeding mechanisms, with an intricate network of progressively optimized filtration units: from the simple choanocyte lining of a central cavity, or spongocoel, to more complex chambers and canals. Furthermore, in a single evolutionary event, a group of sponges transitioned to carnivory. This major evolutionary transition involved replacing the filter-feeding apparatus with mobile phagocytic cells that migrate collectively towards the trapped prey. Here, we focus on the diversity and evolution of sponge nutrition systems and the amazing adaptation to carnivory.
Topics: Animals; Biological Evolution; Carnivory; Digestive System; Morphogenesis; Phylogeny; Porifera
PubMed: 31053892
DOI: 10.1007/s00441-019-03032-8 -
Zootaxa Jan 2023Sponges are common and diverse in California, but they have received little study in the region, and the identities of many common species remain unclear. Here we...
Sponges are common and diverse in California, but they have received little study in the region, and the identities of many common species remain unclear. Here we combine fresh collections and museum vouchers to revise the order Axinellida for California. Seven new species are described: Endectyon (Endectyon) hispitumulus, Eurypon curvoclavus, Aulospongus viridans, Aulospongus lajollaensis, Halicnemia litorea, Halicnemia montereyensis, and Halicnemia weltoni. One new combination is also described, and two existing species are reduced to junior synonyms, resulting in a total of 13 species; a dichotomous key to differentiate them is provided. DNA data from 9 of the 13 species is combined with publicly available data to produce updated global phylogenies for the order.
Topics: Animals; California; Phylogeny; Porifera
PubMed: 37044829
DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5230.5.1