New bioactive compounds from Turkey's seas
Biological and chemical diversity of the marine environment is a largely unexplored source of new bacteria and fungi, which are effective producers of bioactive secondary metabolites. The BACT (Bioactive compounds from Turkish marine macro organism and associated fungi for EU industries) project will therefore focus on the isolation of biologically active compounds from Turkish waters. The international consortium from Canada, China, Germany and Turkey will collect and investigate marine organisms under the terms of the Convention of Biological Diversity. Different geographical areas and ecological habitats will be sampled with the aim of identifying new natural marine products for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Project members will characterise extracts and isolated compounds from marine endophytic fungi and screen for bioactivity. They will also establish a blue mussel phenol oxidase assay as a potent antifouling screening tool. Samples have already been collected from the Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Sea, some of which have shown significant cytotoxic activity. Strong antimicrobial and antioxidant activity was also revealed. Researchers isolated 28 compounds from different marine-based endophytic fungi. One of the compounds extracted from the fungus Pestialotiopsis was assigned as a new natural product. The consortium also isolated 181 bacteria from samples; comparison with the GeneBank revealed novel species of bacteria. These may be of particular interest for the discovery of novel natural products. The majority of the bacteria samples were related to previously described species. However, since natural product production is often strain specific, these microbes are also a valuable resource for research into natural products.
Keywords
Bioactive, bioprospecting, marine products, cosmetics, fungi, endophytic, natural product
