Drugs from the sea
" For a very long time , drugs from different organisms have been discovered and used to prevent a wide range of diseases. Ancient civilization used extracts of plant or animal products as drugs. In India where the ayurveda gave access to a large variety of medicines from plants reported since 1000 BC. With the passage of time, majority of the world's population extensively depends on plants for medicines. plants are the root source of most of the commercial drugs available today". But it has been later found that medicines can be obtained from many other wide ranges of organisms other than plants. Many organisms both terrestrial and aquatic organisms are able to produce several medicinal products. For the past few decades, marine microorganisms has proved to be a extensive source of a wide variety of bioactive compounds that can acts as anti-inflammatory ,antibacterial, antifungal, and antimalarial in nature.
Need of new drugs
Due to some disadvantages of the existing drugs there has been a call for new drugs from unexplored sources. Many of the drugs have side effects that necessitate the need for new drugs. There is the necessity of exploring new cost-effective drugs as many of the existing drugs are very expensive. So, the view has been shifted to the search of organisms from the marine environment as sources of new drugs. The search for new biomedicines from microorganisms resulted in the isolation of more or less 10,000 metabolites with pharmacodynamic properties. Marine environment probably consist of almost 80% of world's plant and animal species. The sea water exihibits harsh environment that include extremities in temperature, salinity, pressure, different levels of aeration and radiation, overcoming effects of mutation, combating infections, fouling and overgrowth by other organisms. SEA WATER SERVES AS THE PROPER ENVIRONMENT FOR LIVING CELLS, SINCE IT CONTAINS MOST OF THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS GROWTH AND MAINTANENCE OF PLANT AND ANIMAL PROTOPLASM.
Marine microorganisms
Marine microorganisms inhabit in all the existing niches ranging from polar ice to hydrothermal vents in the deep sea. Microbes also compete for space and nutrients in the marine environments that has lead to the production of the drugs so far and in future too. Recently, there has been an extremely developing interest for marine microorganisms because of their genetic and biochemical diversities. Microbes are present in mangrove areas as well as in oligotrophic open ocean regions.
" Much of Nature's treasure trove of small molecules remains to be unexplored, particularly from the marine and microbial environments".
Microbes can be easily collected in considerable amounts, isolated and cultured in laboratory premises also. Microorganisms are often in mutuality or symbiotic relationships with other organisms in the marine environment like sponges, coral reefs, echinoderms etc. Microorganisms associated with marine invertebrates have reported to produce a wide range of bioactive compounds.
Marine Bacteria
Sea water contains high concentrations of bacteria. These organisms produce antibiotics to defend themselves from potentially harmful microorganisms. Marine bacteria are rich source of secondary metabolites. Marine cyanobacteria can photosynthesize and form the base level of the food chains. They have the ability to produce biologically active compounds that can induce cytotoxicity, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial activities. They are popular anticancer agents. For example, Apratoxin produced by the species Lyngya is potentially cytotoxic to lung cancer cells in humans.
Marine Fungi
Marine fungi are prolific sources of many natural products. Compounds like cycloglobosins and halovirs have been isolated from fungi. Sorbicilactone a novel alkaloid produced from the sponge ( Ircinia fasciculata) associated fungus penicillium chrysogenum. Marine myxobacteria is also a god source of antibiotics.
" Although the number of natural products is increasing day by day, very few compounds find their way to the market because of many factors which may include cytotoxicity that they show on normal human cell lines or unfit for medical supplements".
Many research works are going on to find new medicines from the coldest and deepest places on the planet. Therefore, scientists are focusing to find new drugs from such unexplored environment to find medicines to treat diseases like AIDS and cancer.
Drugs from the sea is an ongoing research programme to discover drugs from the marine organisms. such a result would help to identify novel compounds not only marine microorganisms but also from the other macroorganisms. It could be understood that marine microorganisms have a great potential for drugs that should be explored properly and exploited well.
