Marine Natural Products from Microalgae: An -Omics Overview

Abstract

Over the last decade, genome sequences and other -omics datasets have been produced for a wide range of microalgae, and several others are on the way. Marine microalgae possess distinct and unique metabolic pathways, and can potentially produce specific secondary metabolites with biological activity (e.g., antipredator, allelopathic, antiproliferative, cytotoxic, anticancer, photoprotective, as well as anti-infective and antifouling activities). Because microalgae are very diverse, and adapted to a broad variety of environmental conditions, the chances to find novel and unexplored bioactive metabolites with properties of interest for biotechnological and biomedical applications are high. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the current efforts and of the available solutions to produce, explore and exploit -omics datasets, with the aim of identifying species and strains with the highest potential for the identification of novel marine natural products. In addition, funding efforts for the implementation of marine microalgal -omics resources and future perspectives are presented as well.

Keywords: bioactive compounds; bioinformatics; blue biotechnology; genetic engineering; genomics; marine microalgae; marine natural products (MNPs); metabolomics; proteomics; transcriptomics.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of drug discovery from microalgae with -omics approaches (i.e., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) in order to identify marine natural products (MNPs). Once the compound of interest is identified, bioactivity screening, heterologous expression, genetic engineering and/or chemical synthesis can follow. This will allow us to characterize the activity and produce the desired bioproducts with pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical and biofuel production applications.