Microbial origin of natural products isolated from ascidians

Abstract:

Marine animals are important sources of marine natural products with biological activity. Ascidians harbor rich microbial communities, including bacteria, actinobacteria, fungi, and cyanobacteria. More and more direct or indirect evidence suggests that some natural products isolated from ascidians are not produced by ascidian themselves, but by their symbiotic microorganisms. In this review, we present the research methods of microbial origin of ascidians natural products in recent years, including direct methods, such as the isolation of culturable bacteria, crude extract detection of non-culturable bacteria, metagenomics, whole genome sequencing, as well as indirect methods of the comparison of compound structures. The study of biosynthetic origin of natural products isolated from marine microorganism-ascidians assemblages, can solve problem of crude drug from animal sources, and provide the evidence for symbiotic relationship between ascidians and microorganisms.

Key words:Ascidian, Natural product, Microbial origin, Symbiosis