The research team, working with specimens collected during Antarctic expeditions in 2014 and 2016, sequenced the fungus using both Illumina short-read and Oxford Nanopore long-read technologies, assembling a high-quality hybrid genome of approximately 37.25 million base pairs across 33 contigs. The assembly achieved over 96% completeness with an N50 of 1.91 megabases, indicating strong contiguity. Functional annotation identified 10,800 protein-coding genes, along with 48 rRNA and 199 tRNA genes, and nearly 10,000 proteins carrying conserved PFAM domains. Phylogenetic analysis based on concatenated ITS, RPB2, and Tef1 sequences confirmed the strain’s placement within the P. australis clade with 99% statistical support, clearly distinguishing it from related species such as P. griseus and P. pannorum.

What makes this genome particularly compelling is the density and diversity of its secondary metabolite machinery. Using antiSMASH version 8.0.1 with relaxed detection parameters, the researchers predicted 44 biosynthetic gene clusters, including 20 type I polyketide synthases, 8 nonribosomal peptide synthetases, 5 terpene clusters, and 4 NRPS-PKS hybrid systems. Only 13 of these clusters showed significant similarity to previously characterized entries in the MIBiG reference database, meaning the vast majority represent potentially novel biosynthetic pathways. Notable matches include clusters associated with geodin production (70% identity, 99.39% coverage), the F9775A/F9775B/orsellinic acid pathway (74% identity), and ustilaginoidin biosynthesis (66% identity), suggesting the fungus may produce compounds with structural parallels to known bioactive molecules.

BiG-SCAPE comparative analysis grouped the 44 clusters into 41 gene cluster families, of which 39 were singletons, meaning they shared little to no similarity with other clusters in the same genome. This pattern of low genetic redundancy combined with high structural diversity is a hallmark of organisms with rich, underexplored chemical repertoires. Two multi-member families stood out: FAM_00002 comprises three NRPS-type clusters with the canonical A–T–C domain architecture, predicted to generate small cyclic dipeptides incorporating aromatic and aliphatic amino acids, closely resembling diketopiperazine synthases from Penicillium rubens. FAM_00001 encodes a highly conserved iterative type I PKS involved in synthesizing 1,3,6,8-tetrahydroxynaphthalene, a critical precursor in the DHN-melanin biosynthetic pathway, sharing 81% sequence identity with a known cluster from Glarea lozoyensis.

Having mapped the genetic blueprint, the team turned to the challenge of activating these silent pathways. In standard laboratory culture, many fungal biosynthetic gene clusters remain transcriptionally dormant, producing no detectable metabolites. To overcome this, the researchers employed two well-established elicitation strategies: sodium nitroprusside (SNP), which releases nitric oxide, and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Escherichia coli O55:B5, which mimics bacterial cell wall components that fungi perceive as threat signals. Nitric oxide functions as a signaling molecule in fungi, regulating developmental processes and neutralizing nitrosative stress while promoting the expression of cryptic biosynthetic genes. LPS, meanwhile, has been shown in prior studies to activate secondary metabolism in approximately 15% of tested fungal strains, including Penicillium and Aspergillus species.

The team cultivated P. australis UA-032-E in twelve different culture media using a micro-bioreactor system, then narrowed the screen to five media (M2, IMA, YES, ISP-4, and CG4) that best supported secondary metabolite production. Cultures were incubated at 15°C for seven days, mirroring the fungus’s natural psychrophilic growth conditions. Metabolites were extracted in situ with ethyl acetate and analyzed by LC–QTOF–MS/MS on an Agilent 6545 Q-TOF instrument equipped with a Zorbax C8 column. The resulting data were processed through MZmine for feature detection and then subjected to molecular networking via the GNPS Feature-Based Molecular Networking platform, complemented by in silico structure prediction using the SIRIUS, ZODIAC, CSI:FingerID, and CANOPUS computational tools.

The metabolomic analysis detected a core set of 75 mass spectral features consistently present across all four experimental treatments (LPS-negative, LPS-positive, SNP-negative, and SNP-positive). Among the annotated compounds were three diketopiperazine cyclic dipeptides: cyclo(L-Phe-L-Pro) at m/z 245.1280, cyclo(L-Val-L-Pro) at m/z 197.1281, and cyclo(L-Pro-L-Leu) at m/z 211.1437. These stable ring-structured metabolites, commonly produced by fungi, have been previously isolated from species including Penicillium chrysogenum, Aspergillus terreus, and marine-derived Pseudofusicoccum. The SIRIUS platform additionally identified maculosin [cyclo(L-Pro-L-Tyr)] at m/z 261.1230, a compound known from Alternaria alternata with documented antimicrobial properties, and methyl asterrate at m/z 385.0896, a polyketide-derived metabolite previously reported from Geomyces species with inhibitory activity against Aspergillus fumigatus.

Beyond small-molecule secondary metabolites, the analysis revealed the presence of DGTS 18:2, a betaine lipid producing a characteristic fragment ion at m/z 498.3800 corresponding to its monoacyl form. In other organisms such as the green alga Chlorella kessleri, DGTS species are known to replace phosphatidylcholine under phosphorus-deficient conditions as part of membrane remodeling strategies. The detection of this lipid in P. australis is consistent with a possible adaptive response to the nutrient-limited conditions of Antarctic sediments, although the researchers caution that a direct causal relationship in this specific context remains to be established through targeted lipidomic studies. The alkaloid harman, a β-carboline detected at m/z 183.0910, and N⁶,N⁶-dimethyladenine at m/z 164.0930, a methylated purine implicated in fungal cytokinin biosynthesis, further round out the chemical profile.

The YES medium supplemented with LPS elicitation yielded the highest metabolic diversity among all tested conditions, suggesting this combination effectively stimulates specialized metabolism in P. australis. The combined SNP-plus-LPS treatment also produced more features than either elicitor alone, consistent with previous findings in Antarctic bacteria where combined elicitation triggered dormant pathways and enhanced metabolite diversity. However, not all predicted biosynthetic gene clusters had corresponding metabolites detected in the analysis. The researchers note this could indicate a requirement for more specific activation signals, or that novel metabolites were produced but remained among the unannotated features in the metabolomic datasets. Certain clusters may also be epigenetically regulated, produce metabolites at very low concentrations, or generate unstable or non-ionizable compounds under the applied analytical conditions.

This study represents a significant step forward in the bioprospecting of polar fungi, demonstrating that the integration of genomic mining with chemical elicitation and metabolomic profiling can efficiently navigate the complex chemical space of psychrophilic organisms. With only approximately 10% of microbial biosynthetic gene clusters currently described in the literature, the findings underscore how much unexplored chemistry remains hidden in extreme environments. The annotated genome of P. australis UA-032-E, deposited in NCBI under accession JBLVTM000000000, now provides a foundational resource for future functional studies and targeted bioprospecting efforts aimed at discovering novel bioactive metabolites with potential applications in pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and industrial biotechnology.

Subject of Research: Genome mining and elicitation of silent biosynthetic pathways in the Antarctic fungus Pseudogymnoascus australis

Article Title: Exploration of inactive metabolic pathways in Antarctic Pseudogymnoascus australis through elicitation: a genomic and metabolomic approach to investigate its biotechnological potential

Article References: Leal, K., Machuca, J., Madariaga, D., Contreras, M. J., Barrientos, L., Nuñez-Montero, K., Chavarría, E., Bruna, P., & Iturrieta-González, I. (2026). Exploration of inactive metabolic pathways in Antarctic Pseudogymnoascus australis through elicitation: a genomic and metabolomic approach to investigate its biotechnological potential. IMA Fungus, 17, Article e156018. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.17.156018

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/imafungus.17.156018

Keywords: Pseudogymnoascus australis, Antarctic fungi, biosynthetic gene clusters, secondary metabolites, elicitation, genomics, metabolomics, psychrophilic fungi, bioprospecting, natural products, nitric oxide, lipopolysaccharide

The study area is one of the most ecologically heterogeneous stretches of the Mediterranean. It spans rocky shores, sandy beaches, seagrass meadows, busy commercial and fishing ports, and the Mar Menor, one of Europe’s largest hypersaline lagoons, protected under the Ramsar Convention, Natura 2000, and Special Protection Area frameworks. It also includes the Salt Ponds of San Pedro del Pinatar, where active salt exploitation pushes salinity to an extraordinary 70.4 grams per liter — more than double typical seawater. Sampling ran from autumn 2024 through summer 2025, with triplicate water and sediment collections at each site in every season, accompanied by in situ measurements of temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, conductivity, and nutrients, plus laboratory analyses of chlorophyll-a, sediment granulometry, and elemental composition.

Recovering yeasts from marine environments is technically demanding because their densities in seawater are typically very low. The team used a membrane filtration approach, concentrating 1-liter water samples and suspended sediment through sterile nitrocellulose membranes, then plating the concentrates onto five different culture media prepared with filtered seawater or supplemented with sodium chloride. An enrichment protocol was added for sediments to boost recovery of rare viable cells. Colonies were grouped into morphotypes based on color, size, shape, and texture, and a stratified selection strategy preserved the relative representation of each morphotype while reducing redundancy. Species identification relied on sequencing the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and the D1/D2 domain of the large subunit rRNA gene, with pragmatic similarity thresholds of at least 98.4 percent for ITS and 99.5 percent for LSU used to assign species proxies. Isolates falling below these thresholds were conservatively treated as potentially novel species pending formal description.

The taxonomic picture that emerged is dominated by the phylum Ascomycota, which accounted for 62 percent of identified species, distributed mainly among the classes Pichiomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Saccharomycetes, and Dipodascomycetes. Basidiomycota made up the remaining 38 percent, chiefly Tremellomycetes and Microbotryomycetes. The genera Rhodotorula and Candida were the most represented in both seawater and sediment. Rhodotorula mucilaginosa was the single most abundant species overall — 25 percent of water isolates and 10 percent of sediment isolates — and the only taxon detected at all ten sampling sites. Candida parapsilosis, a species better known as a human commensal, ranked second, a pattern the authors link to substantial anthropogenic influence along the coast.

Perhaps the most eye-catching component of the dataset is the prevalence of pigmented and melanized fungi. Roughly 10 percent of isolates were stress-tolerant black yeast-like fungi, including Aureobasidium pullulans, Aureobasidium melanogenum, Hortaea werneckii, Exophiala oligosperma, and Zalaria alba. Hortaea werneckii, one of the most halotolerant eukaryotes known, dominated both water and sediment at the hypersaline Salt Ponds site, where it co-occurred with various Debaryomyces species. Red-pigmented carotenoid-producing taxa such as Rhodotorula, Cystobasidium, Sporobolomyces, Symmetrospora, and Rhodosporidiobolus were also abundant. The researchers argue that intense solar radiation, hypersalinity, and seasonal thermal stress characteristic of the semi-arid Murcian coast select for these melanized and carotenoid-rich organisms, whose pigments protect against ultraviolet exposure and oxidative damage.

Diversity was not evenly distributed. Gamma diversity — total species richness pooled across all sites and seasons — was significantly higher in seawater than in sediment, with 77 species detected in the water column versus 44 in the benthos. The authors suggest the water column acts as a dynamic reservoir of yeast diversity, favored by greater dispersal potential, while sediments impose selective pressures that limit which species persist. Spatially, the Port of Cartagena, one of the most important harbors in the western Mediterranean, showed the highest richness of all: 26 species from the water column and 17 from sediments, with the top diversity indices across every metric measured. In contrast, sandy sediments at Portmán, Calblanque, and La Manga supported the lowest diversity, consistent with the constant reworking of unconsolidated substrates by waves, which leaves little organic matter and few stable surfaces for microbial colonization.

Beta diversity analyses revealed just how different these communities are from place to place. Jaccard distances between sites ranged from 0.69 to 0.96, indicating pronounced taxonomic differentiation. Sørensen-based partitioning showed that species turnover accounted for nearly 95 percent of total beta diversity, meaning the coastal gradient hosts largely distinct yeast assemblages rather than nested subsets of a single community. Seasonally, richness stayed remarkably stable — 37 species in autumn, 36 in winter, 40 in spring, and 30 in summer — but community composition shifted dramatically, with only six species, including Candida parapsilosis, Filobasidium magnum, Hortaea werneckii, and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, present across all four seasons. PERMANOVA confirmed significant seasonal differences in assemblage structure, and among the environmental variables tested, temperature was the only significant individual factor, explaining 13.6 percent of the variance.

Beyond their ecological roles in organic matter recycling and nutrient cycling, the yeasts displayed impressive functional versatility. Screening of 90 representative strains showed that about 40 percent produced at least one extracellular lytic enzyme, with many producing several. Six activities were tested on agar plates: amylase, cellulase, pectinase, xylanase, chitinase, and protease. Aureobasidium pullulans was positive for all six, while Symmetrospora marina and Sampaiozyma vanillica showed notable amylase and chitinase activity. The standardized API-ZYM micromethod, which probes 19 enzymatic activities, confirmed broad repertoires in the black yeast-like fungi, with several species expressing more than half of the activities tested. Stress tolerance assays added to the picture: all isolates grew at 5 percent sodium chloride, roughly 40 percent tolerated 10 to 15 percent, and about 90 percent resisted oxidative stress induced by 1 millimolar hydrogen peroxide, with the melanized species showing the highest resistance.

These traits matter for biotechnology. Marine yeasts are known to produce robust enzymes, ferment in seawater, accumulate lipids, synthesize antimicrobials and anticancer compounds, and degrade environmental pollutants. Their resilience stems from complex physiological machinery, including mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathways that orchestrate adaptive transcriptional responses to salinity, temperature, pH, and oxidative stress. The enzymatic repertoire documented in the Murcian isolates also signals a central ecological function: degrading complex polymers such as cellulose, chitin, and pectin within coastal ecosystems, thereby feeding carbon and nutrients back into the microbial food web. Strains with this level of enzymatic breadth and stress tolerance are promising candidates for industrial bioprospecting, bioremediation of contaminated coastal sites, and bioconversion processes.

The survey carries a clinical warning as well. Opportunistic pathogens of potential human concern — Candida parapsilosis, Exophiala oligosperma, Nakaseomyces glabratus, and Diutina catenulata — were predominantly detected at anthropogenically impacted sites, supporting their proposed value as bioindicators of marine contamination. Candida parapsilosis, which peaked at 25 percent relative abundance in summer, has been designated a high-priority fungal pathogen by the World Health Organization, underscoring the need to connect environmental monitoring with public health surveillance. The authors conclude that marine yeasts emerge from this study as both sensitive gauges of ecosystem health and reservoirs of robust strains with significant biotechnological potential, and they call for future work combining cultivation-based and culture-independent approaches to fully capture the diversity and metabolic capacities of this underexplored microbial frontier.

Subject of Research: Microbiology

Article Title: Unveiling the diversity, ecology, and biotechnological potential of culturable marine yeasts in Western Mediterranean coastal ecosystems

Article References: Martínez-Rodrigo, A., Núñez, A., Franco, A., Madrid, M., Vicente-Soler, J., Cansado, J., & Soto, T. (2026). Unveiling the diversity, ecology, and biotechnological potential of culturable marine yeasts in Western Mediterranean coastal ecosystems. IMA Fungus, 17, Article e182209. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.17.182209

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/imafungus.17.182209

Keywords: marine yeasts, Mediterranean Sea, mycology, biotechnology, microbiology, biodiversity, Mar Menor, black yeast fungi, enzymes, bioprospecting, Unveiling, diversity

The research, published in Frontiers in Insect Science, was designed around a simple but demanding question: what happens to a wax moth population when most of its food is replaced by plastic? To find out, the investigators established four dietary treatments. One group received only a commercial waxworm feed made from cereal flours, honey, glycerin, vitamins, and minerals. Three other groups received diets in which 80 percent of that feed, measured by volume, was replaced with finely grated PET from a clean bottle, crumbled polystyrene beads, or cut fragments of polyethylene protective material. Each treatment included five independent experimental units, each starting with 15 larvae, for a total of 300 insects drawn from a single commercial batch.

Rather than tracking individual larvae, the researchers used cumulative adult production as their main measure of colony performance. This metric captures the total number of second-generation adults that emerged in each experimental unit by the end of monitoring, integrating reproduction by the founding cohort with the survival and development of their offspring. Each colony remained on its assigned diet until the initial cohort completed its full life cycle. The offspring stayed in the same containers under the same dietary conditions, and adults were counted only after natural death, which served as a practical endpoint for enumeration rather than as a measure of longevity.

The results revealed a clear hierarchy among the diets. Colonies on the control feed produced the highest mean number of second-generation adults, at 122.0 per unit, with a standard deviation of 56.3. Polystyrene and polyethylene diets yielded intermediate means of 60.4 and 64.0 adults respectively, while the PET diet produced the lowest mean at 41.8 adults per unit. A one-way analysis of variance confirmed that these differences were statistically significant, with an F statistic of 4.402 across three degrees of freedom in the numerator and sixteen in the denominator, yielding a P value of 0.0194. Tukey’s post hoc test showed that only the PET treatment differed significantly from the control, at P equal to 0.0163, while polystyrene and polyethylene fell short of significance with P values of 0.0767 and 0.1016.

In relative terms, the polymer diets reduced adult production by substantial margins. Colonies fed polystyrene produced 50.5 percent fewer adults than controls, those on polyethylene produced 47.5 percent fewer, and those on PET produced 65.7 percent fewer. However, the authors are careful to note that these figures describe responses to the complete dietary formulations rather than to the polymers alone. Because the polymer-containing diets contained only 20 percent commercial feed by volume while the control received 100 percent, the reduced nutrient content alone could account for much of the observed decline. Without quantifying cumulative feed intake, the study cannot separate the effect of polymer exposure from the effect of simple food scarcity.

Alongside the population measurements, the team pursued a parallel microbiological objective: recovering viable bacteria from the larval gut under aerobic laboratory conditions. This culture-dependent approach contrasts with the DNA-based community profiling that has dominated recent studies of the wax moth microbiome. While sequencing surveys can reveal which organisms are present, they do not necessarily yield living cells that can be preserved, grown, and tested directly for enzymatic activity. Culture-dependent isolation, by contrast, provides organisms that can be subjected to functional assays, which is essential for any future bioprospecting effort aimed at finding bacteria capable of degrading synthetic polymers.

To recover bacteria, the researchers dissected the intestinal tracts of five large second-generation larvae from each treatment, selecting individuals weighing between 200 and 300 milligrams to standardize body size and ensure sufficient gut material. The five intestinal samples from each treatment were pooled into a single composite sample, suspended in sterile saline with peptone, and briefly pre-enriched at 35 degrees Celsius. The suspensions were then serially diluted and spread onto five different culture media: lysine iron agar, triple sugar iron agar, yeast extract-supplemented bacteriological agar, MacConkey agar, and brain heart infusion agar. Plates were incubated aerobically at 35 degrees Celsius for 96 hours and examined daily.

The culture media screening revealed a striking pattern of medium-dependent recovery. Yeast extract agar and brain heart infusion agar supported visible growth from all four treatments within the first 24 hours, making them the most permissive media in the panel. Triple sugar iron agar showed growth from 48 hours onward but only from the control and polystyrene samples. Lysine iron agar and MacConkey agar produced no detectable growth from any composite sample during the entire incubation period. These differences demonstrate that the fraction of gut bacteria recovered depends heavily on the composition and selective properties of the medium used, and that no single medium captures the full cultivable diversity present in the insect gut.

From the plates that did support growth, the researchers selected 14 isolates representing visually distinct colony morphotypes, chosen based on differences in size, shape, margin, elevation, color, and surface appearance. Six isolates came from the control sample, four from polystyrene, and two each from polyethylene and PET. The team emphasized that these 14 isolates were not assumed to represent 14 distinct taxa or strains, since morphotype selection can converge on the same organism recovered under different conditions. Each isolate was grown in nutrient broth, its genomic DNA extracted using a phenol-chloroform method, and the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene amplified with the widely used 515F and 806R primers. Bidirectional Sanger sequencing produced consensus fragments of 244 to 253 base pairs after trimming, which were compared against the NCBI nucleotide database using BLASTn.

The taxonomic assignments revealed a strong dominance of a single genus. Thirteen of the 14 isolates were assigned to Bacillus, a genus of spore-forming bacteria that appears frequently in studies of insects exposed to plastic materials and that includes strains previously reported to degrade multiple polymer types. The remaining isolate, recovered only from the PET sample, was assigned to Psychrobacillus, a less commonly reported genus in this context. Because each treatment was represented by a single pooled gut sample with no independent microbiological replicates, the authors caution that these assignments describe the composition of the culture collection rather than treatment-level differences in bacterial abundance or diversity. The recovery of Bacillus from both the control and all three polymer diets indicates that its presence was not exclusive to any formulation and cannot by itself be interpreted as evidence of polymer-related metabolic activity.

The study’s two components, population performance and bacterial recovery, were examined using different sampling frameworks and should be read as parallel findings rather than as evidence of a direct causal relationship. The authors explicitly state that recovering cultivable bacteria does not demonstrate their ability to utilize or modify PET, polystyrene, or polyethylene. Establishing such activity will require functional assays with individual isolates, combined with physicochemical analyses that document verifiable changes in polymer structure. Previous work on PET degradation has focused on specialized microbial enzymes such as PETases, and recent reports have begun to evaluate insect-associated bacteria for similar activity, but the field remains in its early stages.

Looking forward, the researchers identify several priorities for strengthening future investigations. Nutritionally comparable controls would allow the contribution of polymer exposure to be separated from the effect of reduced feed availability. Quantitative feed-intake measurements would clarify how much polymer larvae actually encounter. Stage-specific monitoring of oviposition, larval development, pupation, and adult emergence would reveal which life stages are most sensitive to dietary composition. On the microbiological side, independent replicates, additional cultivation conditions including anaerobic and microaerophilic atmospheres, higher-resolution taxonomic identification through whole-genome sequencing, and systematic functional screening against PET, polystyrene, and polyethylene would help determine whether any of the recovered isolates possess genuinely useful degradative capabilities.

For now, the study stands as a careful, methodologically transparent contribution to a field that has sometimes outrun its evidence. It confirms that wax moth colonies can complete their life cycles on diets dominated by synthetic polymers, though at a measurable reproductive cost that is most severe for PET. It also delivers a tangible resource: a preserved collection of viable gut-associated bacteria, dominated by Bacillus and including one Psychrobacillus isolate, that can be prioritized for the functional assays that will ultimately determine whether these insects and their microbial partners hold real promise for plastic bioremediation. The sequences have been deposited in GenBank under accession numbers PZ779718 through PZ779731, making the collection available for verification and further study by the broader research community.

Subject of Research: Effects of polymer-containing diets on wax moth reproduction and recovery of cultivable gut bacteria

Article Title: Cumulative adult production and aerobic culture-dependent recovery of gut-associated bacteria in Galleria mellonella maintained on polymer-containing diets

Article References: Keferstein-Borges, S. E., Alcalá-Gómez, G., Cisneros-Reyes, C. I., & Alcalá-Gómez, J. (2026). Cumulative adult production and aerobic culture-dependent recovery of gut-associated bacteria in Galleria mellonella maintained on polymer-containing diets. Frontiers in Insect Science, 6, Article 1960793. https://doi.org/10.3389/finsc.2026.1960793

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/finsc.2026.1960793

Keywords: Galleria mellonella, greater wax moth, plastic biodegradation, polyethylene terephthalate, polystyrene, polyethylene, gut microbiome, Bacillus, Psychrobacillus, 16S rRNA sequencing, insect physiology, bioprospecting

Lichens are not single organisms but symbiotic unions between a fungus, the mycobiont, and a photosynthetic partner, an alga or cyanobacterium, called the photobiont. Taxonomically, lichens are classified by their fungal partner, most of which belong to the phylum Ascomycota, with the class Lecanoromycetes being the largest and most species-rich group. Molecular phylogenetics has revealed that the lichenized lifestyle evolved independently in multiple fungal lineages, meaning lichens are not a single natural group but a symbiotic strategy that arose repeatedly during fungal evolution. They come in three principal growth forms: crustose, which forms tightly attached crusts; foliose, with leaf-like lobes; and fruticose, which are shrubby or hair-like. Finer variations include squamulose, gelatinous, leprose and dimorphic forms, each reflecting adaptations to distinct ecological niches.

The chemical heart of the story lies in lichen secondary metabolism. The fungal partner synthesizes an extraordinary array of compounds through polyketide pathways, depositing them as crystals on the surface of the thallus. Major chemical classes include depsides, polyphenolic compounds linked by ester bonds that show antimicrobial, antioxidant and photoprotective activity; depsidones, their cyclic-ether cousins, which often display stronger antimicrobial, antiviral and cytotoxic effects; dibenzofurans such as the famous usnic acid; anthraquinones; pulvinic acid derivatives; xanthones; and various nitrogen-containing alkaloids. Many of these molecules are found nowhere else in nature, and their ecological roles, shielding the thallus from ultraviolet radiation, deterring herbivores and suppressing microbial competitors, remain only partially understood despite decades of experimental work.

Biosynthetically, lichen metabolites flow from three main routes. The acetyl-malonate pathway is the dominant one, beginning with acetyl-CoA and successive malonyl-CoA condensations that build polyketide chains, which are then cyclized, oxidized, reduced and esterified into compounds such as atranorin, evernic acid, salazinic acid, stictic acid, fumarprotocetraric acid and the dibenzofuran usnic acid. The shikimate pathway, funneling through chorismic acid, yields the pulvinic acid pigments like vulpinic acid and calycin that paint lichens in yellow and orange hues while providing UV screening and antimicrobial defense. The mevalonate pathway produces terpenoids and sterols, including zeorin in Cladonia species, hopane-type terpenes in Ramalina and Parmelia, and ergosterol derivatives in Usnea and Evernia. Genomic studies have revealed that lichen-forming fungi harbor large numbers of silent or cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters, organized into coordinated clusters alongside tailoring enzymes such as cytochrome P450 monooxygenases, O-methyltransferases and glycosyltransferases, hinting that the true metabolic repertoire is far larger than anything observed under natural conditions.

How these compounds actually work is increasingly clear. Usnic acid, atranorin and salazinic acid disrupt bacterial and fungal membrane permeability, causing cytoplasmic leakage, while also interfering with essential microbial enzymes and blocking biofilm formation, a major driver of chronic infection and antibiotic resistance. Phenolic metabolites such as evernic acid and usnic acid neutralize reactive oxygen species and boost endogenous defenses like glutathione and antioxidant enzymes. Anti-inflammatory effects arise from inhibition of cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase and the suppression of pro-inflammatory cytokine expression. On the cancer front, lichen metabolites trigger apoptosis by collapsing mitochondrial membrane potential, releasing cytochrome c and activating caspases, while also arresting the cell cycle and inhibiting angiogenesis. Depsidones such as stictic and norstictic acid have shown antiviral activity against herpes simplex virus in vitro by interfering with viral polymerases and genome replication.

The antimicrobial pedigree of lichens dates back to Burkholder’s pioneering 1944 report on antibiotic activity, followed by Vartia’s broader evidence. Screening studies since then suggest that more than half of all lichen species tested exhibit antimicrobial effects. Extracts of Ramalina farinacea and over 60 New Zealand species inhibited pathogens including Staphylococcus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas and Mycobacterium. Usnea ghattensis extracts suppressed multiple Bacillus species and Staphylococcus aureus, while Serbian lichens such as Cladonia furcata and Parmelia caperata were active against both bacteria and fungi. Notably, recent work indicates that usnic acid derivatives and atranorin analogs show enhanced activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria, including MRSA and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a finding with obvious relevance as antibiotic resistance escalates worldwide.

Antioxidant and antitumor activities round out the pharmacological portfolio. Antarctic lichens display exceptionally high radical-scavenging capacity, with usnic, sekikaic and salazinic acids from Ramalina species proving effective against oxidative stress, and Usnea ghattensis extracts showing hepatoprotective benefits in models of ethanol-induced liver damage. In oncology, usnic acid exhibits antiproliferative effects across multiple cancer cell lines; pannarin from Psoroma species induced apoptosis in prostate carcinoma and melanoma cells; protolichesterinic acid from Cetraria islandica blocked breast cancer cell lines; and gyrophoric acid from Umbilicaria showed strong cytotoxicity. Diffractaic acid, usnic acid and decarboxystenosporic acid from Usnea diffracta demonstrated antipyretic, analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, while atranorin, lecanoric acid and physodic acid added immunomodulatory properties to the list.

Beyond medicine, lichen chemistry reaches into the kitchen, the bathroom cabinet and the field. Lichens have been eaten for centuries: roughly 15 edible types are consumed in China, species like Parmotrema tinctorum and Everniastrum cirrhatum serve as food supplements in India and the Middle East, and Cladonia rangiferina and Cetraria islandica were traditionally baked into bread in parts of Europe. Parmelia perlata, known as black stone flower, is a prized spice in Indian biryanis and stews. In cosmetics, pulvinic acid derivatives and usnic acid act as natural UV filters with sun protection factors comparable to some commercial sunscreens, while phenolic extracts from Parmelia, Evernia and Cladonia neutralize the free radicals behind skin aging, and antimicrobial metabolites combat acne-causing Propionibacterium acnes. In agriculture, lichen compounds inhibit seed germination and root growth in weeds such as wild oat and barnyard grass, and larvicidal extracts from numerous species kill Aedes aegypti, Culex quinquefasciatus and Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, offering ecofriendly alternatives to synthetic pesticides. Industrially, lichens supply natural dyes, including the purple orcein derived from lecanoric acid in Parmotrema tinctorum, and the oak moss and tree moss extracts of Evernia prunastri and Pseudevernia furfuracea remain fixtures of the global perfume industry.

Significant obstacles stand between this promise and commercial reality. Lichens grow extraordinarily slowly, often taking years to decades to form mature thalli, and their complex dual-organism biology makes artificial cultivation technically demanding. Metabolite profiles fluctuate with species, environment and season, complicating standardization, and some compounds show cytotoxicity at higher concentrations, demanding rigorous toxicity profiling before clinical use. The review’s authors see a way forward through microbial fermentation of lichen-associated fungi, heterologous expression of biosynthetic genes, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, combined with green extraction strategies, high-throughput screening and government-backed entrepreneurial initiatives. If those tools mature, the authors argue, lichens could indeed become the “green gold” of sustainable bio-entrepreneurship, provided that conservation keeps pace with exploitation in biodiversity hotspots like the Himalayas, the Western Ghats and Northeastern India, where roughly 2,500 of the world’s estimated 30,000 lichen species reside.

Subject of Research: Bioactive secondary metabolites produced by lichens and their pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and agricultural applications

Article Title: Lichen metabolites as potential natural products: a review

Article References: Sahoo, B., Pradhan, S., Dash, S., Upreti, D. K., & Rath, B. (2026). Lichen metabolites as potential natural products: a review. Discover Chemistry, 3(1), Article 524. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44371-026-00932-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44371-026-00932-x

Keywords: lichens, secondary metabolites, usnic acid, natural products, antimicrobial, anticancer, antioxidant, polyketides, bioprospecting, symbiosis, cosmetics, biopesticides

The research, led by Mehebub Sarwar Hossain and colleagues at Aliah University in Kolkata, was built on direct engagement with the communities who know these forests best. Rather than relying on earlier floristic records, the team identified species through field observation, herbarium voucher collection, and guided walks with local informants. Data came from semi-structured and group interviews with 106 informants, 55 men and 51 women aged between 40 and 70 years, including experienced fishers, crab catchers, and professional honey collectors. All interviews followed standard ethical protocols with prior informed consent, an important safeguard in research involving traditional knowledge held by vulnerable coastal communities.

To move beyond anecdote, the researchers applied four widely used quantitative ethnobotanical indices: use value (UV), fidelity level (FL), relative frequency of citation (RFC), and the informant consensus factor (ICF). These metrics, developed over decades of ethnobotanical research, allow scientists to measure how culturally salient a species is and how consistently different informants agree on its uses. A high fidelity level, for instance, indicates that a large proportion of the people who cite a plant for a particular ailment use it specifically for that purpose, while a high informant consensus factor signals strong agreement across a community about which plants work for which disease category.

The results paint a vivid picture of a pharmacopoeia rooted in the mud. Bruguiera gymnorhiza emerged as one of the most significant species, with a fidelity level of 85.71, a relative frequency of citation of 0.4, and a use value of 0.45. Aegiceras corniculatum recorded a fidelity level of 81.36 with the highest relative frequency of citation among the priority taxa at 0.56, while Bruguiera parviflora achieved a fidelity level of 81.25 and the highest use value of the group at 0.74. Sonneratia apetala, Xylocarpus granatum, and Heritiera fomes also ranked prominently, each combining high citation rates with substantial use values, indicating that these species occupy central positions in both daily livelihood practices and household medicine.

Perhaps the most compelling finding concerns the degree of consensus around particular disease categories. The informant consensus factor ranged from 0.73 for pregnancy-related disorders to a remarkable 0.96 for gastrointestinal disorders, based on 10 species and 254 individual reports. Conditions grouped as other ailments, including cuts, wounds, infections, and haemorrhage management, achieved an ICF of 0.95 from 10 species and 190 reports. In ethnobotanical terms, values this high are rare and meaningful: they suggest that independent informants, scattered across ten localities in the South 24 Parganas district, converge on the same plants for the same problems, a pattern that ethnopharmacologists interpret as evidence of genuine therapeutic efficacy rather than random cultural association.

That interpretation gains substantial weight from the study’s pharmacological cross-validation. The authors systematically compared their ethnobotanical findings with recently published laboratory literature and confirmed antibacterial, antioxidant, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcer, and antidiarrheal activities in all of the priority taxa. Heritiera fomes bark, for example, has been shown in experimental studies to stimulate insulin secretion and lower blood glucose, while Xylocarpus granatum bark extracts have ameliorated hyperglycaemia and oxidative stress in diabetic mouse models. Extracts of Sonneratia apetala fruit and seed have demonstrated antidiarrheal, analgesic, and antimicrobial effects, and Avicennia marina has repeatedly shown antibacterial activity, including against biofilm-forming bacteria and pathogens relevant to aquaculture.

The wound-healing tradition also stands on firmer ground than sceptics might expect. A topical ointment containing leaf extract of Aegialitis rotundifolia, one of the species highlighted in the Sundarbans assessment, has been shown to accelerate excision, incision, and burn wound healing in rats. Antioxidant compounds isolated from Bruguiera parviflora and Kandelia candel, along with antibacterial and cytotoxic activities documented in related mangrove genera, collectively suggest that the salty, oxygen-poor environments in which these trees survive may drive the production of chemically unusual secondary metabolites with real pharmaceutical potential. Mangroves, in other words, are not merely ecological engineers that trap sediment and shield coastlines; they are chemical factories shaped by some of the most stressful growing conditions in the plant kingdom.

Yet the study’s conservation findings add urgency to any bioprospecting ambitions. Using IUCN Red List assessments, the team found that 19 of the 23 true mangrove species are currently listed as Least Concern, but three, Phoenix paludosa, Aegialitis rotundifolia, and Ceriops decandra, are classified as Near Threatened, and Heritiera fomes, one of the most culturally and medicinally valued species in the region, is listed as Endangered. The irony is sharp: the tree whose bark shows documented antidiabetic activity and whose local use value ranks among the highest in the forest is also the one sliding fastest toward extinction. Overharvesting, habitat conversion, salinity changes driven by upstream water diversion, and the intensifying effects of climate change all press on the Sundarbans ecosystem, and the communities that depend on it most closely are often those with the fewest alternatives.

This is where the study’s integrated framework becomes more than an academic exercise. By simultaneously linking quantitative ethnobotanical salience, livelihood dependency, conservation urgency, and pharmacological evidence within a single analytical matrix, the researchers have produced what they describe as an evidence-based priority tool for conservation planning, primary healthcare integration, and pharmaceutical bioprospecting. Species that score highly across all four dimensions, such as Heritiera fomes and Aegiceras corniculatum, become obvious candidates for targeted protection and cultivation programmes, while the strong informant consensus around gastrointestinal and wound-care applications points toward realistic pathways for incorporating validated traditional remedies into formal primary healthcare in remote delta villages where clinics are scarce and travel is difficult.

The broader implications reach well beyond West Bengal. Mangrove forests are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth and provide storm protection, fisheries nursery habitat, and livelihoods for millions of coastal people, yet they continue to disappear at alarming rates worldwide. Studies like this one add a dimension that purely ecological valuations often miss: the cultural and medicinal capital embedded in these forests, and the risk that losing the trees also means losing centuries of accumulated human knowledge about how to use them. With the World Health Organization increasingly engaging with traditional medicine at a global policy level, and with drug discovery programmes actively screening coastal flora for novel compounds, the Sundarbans findings arrive at a moment when the case for protecting mangroves has never been richer in evidence. The people of the delta have known for generations that these trees heal. Science, species by species and compound by compound, is finally catching up, and the race now is to ensure that both the forest and the knowledge survive long enough for that convergence to matter.

Subject of Research: Ethnobotanical and pharmacological assessment of true mangrove species in the Indian Sundarbans

Article Title: Ethnomedicinal knowledge, quantitative ethnobotanical indices, socioeconomic benefits, and conservation priorities of true mangroves in the Indian Sundarbans, West Bengal: a community-based integrated assessment

Article References: Hossain, M. S., Bera, A., Ulla, S. S., Alam, S. R., Laila, S., Sk, A., Chakraborty, M., Parveen, S. I., Molla, M. M. R., & Imam Saadi, S. M. A. (2026). Ethnomedicinal knowledge, quantitative ethnobotanical indices, socioeconomic benefits, and conservation priorities of true mangroves in the Indian Sundarbans, West Bengal: a community-based integrated assessment. Plant Biosystems, 160(5), Article 270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44473-026-00286-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44473-026-00286-3

Keywords: Sundarbans, mangroves, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, pharmacological validation, conservation, IUCN Red List, Heritiera fomes, traditional knowledge, bioprospecting, West Bengal, informant consensus factor

The story begins with the island’s human history. Whalers Bay was home to a whaling station established in the early twentieth century, and its buildings were constructed largely from wood imported from Europe, North America and South America. Later, these structures were repurposed for scientific research operations in the mid-twentieth century. The researchers suspected that this imported timber, along with animal fodder, provisions and other materials brought during the eras of exploitation and exploration, may have inadvertently ferried temperate-zone fungi into Antarctica. Because wood is essentially absent from the natural Antarctic environment, any decomposer fungi found colonizing these historic structures are likely to have arrived with the materials themselves, or to have been attracted to them as nutrient-rich bait for a resident mycobiota already present on the island.

During the Brazilian Antarctic Operation XXXVII in December 2018, the team collected twelve samples of wood, fabric, rope and soil from various points around Whalers Bay. The samples were frozen at minus twenty degrees Celsius during transport back to the Laboratory of Polar Microbiology and Tropical Connections in Brazil. There, the scientists used enrichment cultures of yeast malt medium, incubated at fifteen degrees Celsius, to coax out the cultivable fungi. They also employed a selective medium containing eight percent ethanol to hunt for ethanol-resistant, fermenting yeasts. Colonies were grouped by their macroscopic characteristics, purified, and preserved in the university’s Microorganism and Cell Collection under the code UFMGCB.

Identification relied on a polyphasic approach combining morphology with molecular markers. The researchers amplified the internal transcribed spacer region of ribosomal DNA for filamentous fungi and the D1/D2 domain of the 26S rDNA gene for yeasts, then sequenced the products by the Sanger method and compared them against reference sequences in GenBank using BLASTn, considering isolates with identity of at least ninety-nine percent to be the same species. The results were striking: forty-seven fungal isolates were recovered, representing sixteen genera and twenty-three taxa spanning the phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. The most abundant genus was Coniochaeta, followed by Cadophora, Pseudogymnoascus, Mrakia and Leucosporidium. Other genera included Ascocoryne, Candida, Cystobasidium, Goffeauzyma, Graphium, Mollisia, Naganishia, Papiliotrema, Phenoliferia and Purimyces.

Diversity statistics painted a picture of a rich and highly structured community. The samples yielded a Fisher’s alpha of 17.80, a Margalef richness index of 5.71 and a Simpson’s dominance index of 0.93, indicating high diversity, richness and dominance of decomposer taxa. Crucially, the species accumulation curve generated with the Mao Tao index did not reach an asymptote, meaning the sampling had not exhausted the fungal diversity present in these substrates. This finding mirrors an earlier culture-independent DNA metabarcoding study of the same samples, which likewise revealed cryptic fungal diversity in the historic wooden structures. Together, the two studies reinforce the idea that imported wood acts as both a refuge for introduced species and a magnet for native Antarctic decomposers seeking an abundant organic nutrient source in an otherwise barren landscape.

Many of the genera recovered are familiar players in Antarctic wood decay. Coniochaeta species have been reported from wood on Deception Island and at Japan’s Syowa Station, and from soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, though some members of the genus are opportunistic human pathogens. Cadophora luteo-olivaceae, identified in this study, was previously documented in the old buildings at Whalers Bay by Held and Blanchette, underscoring the group’s capacity to thrive in polar environments when wood is available. Pseudogymnoascus is widespread in cold terrestrial and marine environments of both polar regions and is thought to play a central role in decomposition and nutrient cycling. Mrakia, meanwhile, accounts for roughly thirty-five percent of cultivable fungi isolated from lake sediments and soils of East Antarctica, and Leucosporidium species have been found in Antarctic seawater, soils, bryophytes and flowering plants. Even Naganishia, whose members are described as among the most UV-resistant organisms known, made an appearance.

The biotechnological heart of the study lies in the enzymes. All forty-seven isolates were screened for production of four extracellular enzymes: amylase, cellulase, inulinase and pectinase. Activity was assessed by growing the fungi on media containing specific inducing substrates and measuring halos of hydrolysis after seven days at fifteen degrees Celsius, with an Enzyme Index of two or greater defining a good producer. Amylase production was the most widespread, with thirty-five isolates producing degradation halos, followed by inulinase with thirty-four and cellulase with thirty-three, while pectinase lagged at twelve. Inulinase, however, boasted the highest number of good producers, with eight isolates reaching the threshold. Standout performers included Coniochaeta sp. 2, a good producer of both cellulase and inulinase with enzymatic indices of 2.70 and 2.51 respectively, and the yeast Phenoliferia glacialis, which produced cellulase and pectinase with indices of 2.11 and 2.44.

Several of these findings represent firsts for science. The study appears to be the first report of Coniochaeta isolates capable of producing amylase and inulinase, the first report of a Purimyces isolate as a good inulinase producer, and the first documentation of Phenoliferia glacialis producing inulinase. Because all the detected enzymes were active at low temperatures, they carry considerable industrial promise. Cold-active amylases could serve in cold-water detergents, cold saccharification in food processing, textile desizing and animal feed additives for cold climates. Inulinase can generate fructooligosaccharides for functional foods and support cold-fermentation brewing, while pectinase enables fruit juice clarification at low temperatures, preserving vitamins, flavor and color, and finds use in eco-friendly textile bioscouring. Cellulase applications span cold bio-polishing in textiles, cold-wash laundry detergents and environmentally gentler pulp and paper processing. Enzymes that work at low temperatures reduce energy costs, lower the risk of microbial contamination and can eliminate expensive heating equipment entirely.

Perhaps the most commercially intriguing discovery came from the selective ethanol medium. Two isolates of the yeast Solicoccozyma terricola, a psychrotolerant oleaginous species previously known from soils, mosses and lichens in Antarctica and from glacial sediments in Italy, were recovered in low density from wood fragments and soil. Temperature trials showed the yeast grows across a wide range from five to twenty-five degrees Celsius, with the strongest colonies between fifteen and twenty degrees. When cultured in glucose-rich broth at twenty degrees for nine days and stained with the fluorescent dye Nile Red, the cells revealed lipid bodies under confocal microscopy, confirming intracellular lipid production. Previous work by Tasselli and colleagues reported that at twenty degrees this species achieves lipid yields approaching those of palm oil, making it a candidate feedstock for biofuel production, with additional potential in food, cosmetics and textile industries.

The study’s conclusions carry weight beyond biotechnology. The fungal communities documented in Whalers Bay’s lignocellulosic substrates are dominated by decomposers, consistent with the hypothesis that many taxa arrived with imported construction timber, though the authors acknowledge the fungi could also have arrived as spores dispersed by air currents, birds or human activity, or that the imported substrates may simply have acted as bait for fungi already present. Because the surviving buildings form part of a formally declared Antarctic Historic Monument, Antarctic Treaty nations bear a duty to protect these sites, and wood-degrading fungi pose a direct challenge to their long-term conservation. The researchers call for further genetic studies to identify the genes behind the observed enzyme production and detailed investigations of the lipid metabolic pathways in S. terricola. They also emphasize a broader message: the Antarctic ecosystem shelters microbes of great biotechnological potential, reinforcing the urgency of preserving the region against biological loss driven by local climate change. In the frozen timbers of a whaling station, it seems, the continent has been quietly running an experiment in applied biology for over a century.

Subject of Research: Culturable fungal diversity in Antarctic lignocellulosic substrates and their production of cold-active enzymes and lipids with industrial potential

Article Title: Fungal diversity in Antarctic lignocellulosic substrates and their production of enzymes and lipids with potential industrial applications

Article References: Teixeira, E. A. A., de Souza, L. M. D., de Carvalho, C. R., Rosa, C. A., Convey, P., & Rosa, L. H. (2025). Fungal diversity in Antarctic lignocellulosic substrates and their production of enzymes and lipids with potential industrial applications. Blue Biotechnology, 2(1), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44315-025-00035-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44315-025-00035-9

Keywords: Antarctica, fungi, extremophiles, cold-active enzymes, bioprospecting, biotechnology, Coniochaeta, Solicoccozyma terricola, oleaginous yeast, biofuel, Deception Island, wood decay

The enzyme, named BWbg1, belongs to a class of proteins known as beta-galactosidases, which catalyze the cleavage of lactose, the disaccharide sugar that makes up a large fraction of the solids in milk, into its two component monosaccharides, glucose and galactose. Beta-galactosidases have long occupied a central place in dairy biotechnology because they support two distinct and commercially significant applications. The first is the production of low-lactose and lactose-free milk and dairy goods for the large population of people who cannot properly digest lactose. The second is the synthesis of galacto-oligosaccharides, or GOS, through transgalactosylation reactions in which the enzyme, instead of simply splitting lactose, stitches galactose units together into short chains that humans cannot digest but that beneficial gut bacteria eagerly consume.

What makes BWbg1 stand out in a crowded field of known beta-galactosidases is its thermal profile. The purified enzyme exhibits maximum activity at 80 degrees Celsius and at a neutral pH of 7, a combination that immediately distinguishes it from the mesophilic enzymes traditionally used in dairy processing. It also demonstrates impressive resilience, retaining more than 72 percent of its activity after six hours of incubation at 55 degrees Celsius. For industrial operators, these are not merely laboratory curiosities. Elevated operating temperatures increase the initial productivity of enzymatic reactions, improve the solubility of substrates such as concentrated lactose solutions, and dramatically reduce the risk of contamination by spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms, which struggle to proliferate at temperatures that the enzyme tolerates with ease.

The path to BWbg1 illustrates the power of functional metagenomic screening, a technique that has become one of the most productive strategies in modern bioprospecting. Rather than trying to culture the microorganisms from the As Burgas hot spring, an approach that would capture only a small fraction of the community because most environmental microbes resist laboratory cultivation, the researchers extracted the collective DNA of the entire microbial ecosystem and cloned it into a metagenomic library. They then screened that library for clones exhibiting beta-galactosidase activity, allowing the function of the gene itself, rather than any prior knowledge of the organism that carried it, to guide the discovery. Sequence analysis of the protein encoded by the recovered gene revealed that BWbg1 belongs to glycoside hydrolase family 35, a well-characterized group of enzymes, yet its properties proved distinctive enough to warrant the label of novelty.

The enzyme’s performance in GOS synthesis is arguably its most commercially compelling feature. Working with a concentrated lactose solution of 40 percent weight per volume at 70 degrees Celsius, BWbg1 converted the substrate into a product mixture containing up to 48 percent galacto-oligosaccharides by weight over a four-hour reaction. That yield, achieved at a temperature at which most conventional enzymes would rapidly denature, positions BWbg1 as a serious candidate for industrial prebiotic production. GOS are among the most widely added prebiotics in infant formula and functional foods, valued for their ability to selectively stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria such as Bifidobacteria in the gut. A thermostable enzyme that can sustain high-yield synthesis at 70 degrees Celsius offers manufacturers both faster throughput and a substantially lower microbial contamination risk during extended production runs.

Perhaps the most surprising finding, however, concerns what happens when the enzyme is exposed to heat before it is asked to work. The researchers observed a remarkable heat activation effect: after two hours of incubation at 65 degrees Celsius, BWbg1’s ability both to hydrolyze lactose and to produce GOS was enhanced rather than diminished. This behavior has direct implications for how the enzyme could be deployed in real dairy plants. Milk destined for the market is routinely pasteurized, and the two dominant methods are HTST, high-temperature short-time pasteurization, and VAT, the older vat pasteurization approach that uses lower temperatures over longer holding periods. The study demonstrated that BWbg1 retains its activity after both HTST and VAT pasteurization of commercial milk, and that the heat activation it experiences during these treatments actually improves its subsequent performance on the lactose in the milk.

This compatibility with pasteurization regimes is a genuinely practical advantage. In current industrial practice, lactose hydrolysis is typically performed as a separate step after pasteurization, requiring additional equipment, time, and careful hygiene controls. An enzyme that can be added to milk, survive the pasteurization step itself, and then go on to work more effectively afterward could allow manufacturers to merge two processing stages into one streamlined operation. The enzyme’s tolerance of the exact thermal conditions used to make milk safe for consumers means that the same heat treatment that protects public health simultaneously primes the biocatalyst for action, a coincidence of process requirements that enzyme engineers usually struggle to achieve by design.

Equally noteworthy is the enzyme’s behavior at the opposite end of the temperature scale. The study reports that BWbg1 remains capable of hydrolyzing lactose from commercial milk and producing GOS even at 8 degrees Celsius, a temperature within the range of standard refrigerated storage. This cold activity opens the door to applications in which milk is treated during chilled logistics or storage, extending the enzyme’s usefulness well beyond the hot processing floor. A single biocatalyst that functions productively from refrigeration temperatures up to 80 degrees Celsius spans a thermal range that few, if any, commercially established beta-galactosidases can match, and it gives process designers an unusual degree of freedom in choosing where and when in the production chain to deploy it.

The broader significance of the work lies in what it says about the untapped enzymatic wealth of extreme environments. Hot springs have long been recognized as reservoirs of thermostable proteins, because the microorganisms adapted to life at elevated temperatures must maintain enzymes that keep their structure and function under conditions that would destroy the proteins of ordinary organisms. Yet the vast majority of these thermophilic communities remain genetically uncharacterized, and functional metagenomics offers a way to access their catalytic repertoire without ever growing a single cell in the laboratory. The As Burgas spring, flowing through a geologically active region of Galicia, proved to be a productive hunting ground, and the researchers suggest that BWbg1’s versatility, spanning lactose hydrolysis, GOS synthesis, pasteurization compatibility, and cold-temperature activity, makes it a strong candidate for industrial application.

For consumers, the practical outcome of such research is tangible. Lactose intolerance affects a substantial share of the global population, and demand for lactose-free dairy continues to climb, while the market for prebiotic ingredients that support gut health grows in parallel. An enzyme that can serve both markets, converting milk into a digestible product for one consumer group and into a GOS-enriched functional food for another, addresses two major trends in food science with a single biocatalyst. As the team’s results demonstrate, the answer to some of the dairy industry’s most persistent processing challenges may have been waiting all along in the steaming waters of a Spanish hot spring, encoded in the genomes of microbes no one has ever cultured.

Subject of Research: A thermostable GH35 beta-galactosidase from a hot spring metagenome for lactose hydrolysis and galacto-oligosaccharide production in milk

Article Title: A novel thermostable beta-galactosidase for low-lactose and galacto-oligosaccharide-rich milk

Article References: DeCastro, M.-E., Becerra-Fernández, M., Rodríguez-Belmonte, E., & González-Siso, M.-I. (2026). A novel thermostable beta-galactosidase for low-lactose and galacto-oligosaccharide-rich milk. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-026-14045-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00253-026-14045-z

Keywords: beta-galactosidase, metagenomics, thermostable enzyme, galacto-oligosaccharides, lactose-free milk, hot spring, bioprospecting, dairy biotechnology, prebiotics, pasteurization, GH35, transgalactosylation

Actinomycetota, the bacterial phylum that gave the world streptomycin, erythromycin, tetracycline and countless other antibiotics, have long been the workhorses of natural-product drug discovery. Yet as terrestrial soils have been sampled exhaustively over the past eight decades, the hit rate of genuinely novel compounds has declined, pushing researchers toward underexplored environments. Marine ecosystems, and marine plants in particular, have emerged as promising frontiers. Seagrasses occupy a biologically demanding niche, submerged in saline water, buffeted by tides and constantly exposed to diverse microorganisms, and their internal tissues harbor endophytes that may produce specialized chemistry to help the plant fend off pathogens. That chemical arms race is precisely what makes them attractive targets for bioprospecting.

In the new work, Lucy D. Mbusi, Jacqueline I. Chibona and Thomas J. Lyimo collected specimens of Oceana serrulata from the coastal waters at Mjimwema and set out to culture the actinomycetes residing within the plant’s leaves and roots. Endophytes are organisms that live at least part of their lives inside plant tissue without causing disease, and accessing them requires careful surface sterilization to eliminate microbes merely riding on the outside of the plant. From the processed tissues, the team succeeded in growing seven isolates: five from leaf material and two from roots. All proved to be Gram-positive, with cells ranging from rod-shaped to coccoid, and the colonies displayed a striking diversity of textures and pigments on the culture plates.

To place these organisms on the bacterial tree of life, the researchers sequenced a portion of the 16S rRNA gene, the standard molecular barcode used to identify bacteria and assess how closely an unknown isolate resembles known species. The analysis assigned the seven isolates to five genera: Diaminobutyricimonas, represented by two isolates; Microbacterium, also with two; and single isolates of Ornithinimicrobium, Frigoribacterium and Micrococcus. What caught the team’s attention was not just the breadth of genera but the genetic distances involved. Six of the seven isolates showed 16S sequence similarity to their closest reference strains of only 82.89 to 98.15 percent, well below the thresholds typically used to delineate bacterial species, marking them as putatively novel candidates that will require fuller taxonomic investigation, including genome sequencing and detailed phenotypic comparison, before they can be formally described as new species.

Two of the genera had never before been reported from any seagrass ecosystem anywhere in the world. Diaminobutyricimonas, first described from an air sample in Korea, and Frigoribacterium, a genus of cold-tolerant soil and plant-associated bacteria, had both remained absent from the seagrass literature until now. Their appearance inside Oceana serrulata suggests that the endophytic communities of tropical marine plants remain poorly charted, and that even a modest cultivation effort from a single site can surface lineages with no documented history in this habitat. The finding adds weight to a growing view that seagrass meadows, often overshadowed by coral reefs and mangroves in marine microbiology, deserve far more systematic attention as reservoirs of microbial novelty.

Identifying the microbes was only half of the study. The team extracted crude secondary metabolites from each isolate and tested them against a panel of six clinically significant test organisms: the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, a common cause of skin and bloodstream infections; Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica, both leading agents of foodborne and diarrheal disease; Klebsiella pneumoniae, an increasingly drug-resistant hospital pathogen; Pseudomonas aeruginosa, notorious for its resistance to antibiotics and its threat to patients with cystic fibrosis and burns; and the yeast Candida albicans, a frequent cause of fungal infections. Every one of the seven crude extracts showed activity against at least one of these six targets, a remarkably consistent hit rate for a small collection of isolates.

Two strains stood out from the pack. The Diaminobutyricimonas isolate designated ORE1 and the Microbacterium isolate designated ORE7 inhibited all six test microorganisms, spanning Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria and a fungus. That breadth of activity is significant because Gram-negative pathogens such as Pseudomonas and Klebsiella are wrapped in an outer membrane that excludes many conventional antibiotics, making them among the most difficult organisms to treat and a priority for the World Health Organization’s list of resistant bacteria in urgent need of new drugs. A crude extract that can suppress such a wide spectrum of organisms suggests the production of potent bioactive compounds, although the researchers emphasize that the active molecules themselves have not yet been isolated or chemically identified.

The authors are careful about what these results do and do not demonstrate. Crude extracts are complex mixtures, and inhibition in a laboratory assay does not guarantee that the responsible compounds will be chemically tractable, safe, or effective in a clinical setting. The path from a petri dish in Dar es Salaam to a pharmacy shelf is long, typically requiring compound purification, structure elucidation, optimization and years of preclinical and clinical testing. Moreover, the putatively novel status of most isolates rests on partial 16S sequences; confirming new species will demand the full polyphasic taxonomic treatment that modern bacteriology requires. Nevertheless, the combination of genetic novelty and broad antimicrobial activity in the same organisms is exactly the profile that natural-product scientists look for when prioritizing strains for deeper investigation.

The broader context makes the search urgent. Antimicrobial resistance is projected to contribute to millions of deaths annually in the coming decades, and the pipeline of new antibiotic classes has thinned dramatically since the golden age of discovery. Actinomycetes remain the single richest known source of antibiotics, and marine and endophytic lineages are among the least explored branches of the group. Previous work by the same research group has documented bioactive actinomycetes in Tanzanian seagrass sediments, on seagrass surfaces and in the leaves of other seagrass species, building a picture of the Western Indian Ocean’s seagrass ecosystems as a coherent and largely untapped bioprospecting landscape. The partial 16S sequences from the new isolates have been deposited in the NCBI GenBank database, making them available to other researchers.

For now, the serrated seagrass of Mjimwema has yielded seven microbial tenants, six of them possibly new to science, all of them chemically armed. Whether Diaminobutyricimonas ORE1, Microbacterium ORE7 or their relatives will one day contribute a new medicine remains an open question, but the study demonstrates that some of the planet’s most promising microbial chemistry may be hiding in plain sight, inside the leaves and roots of flowering plants that grow beneath the waves. As the authors note, the capacity of these strains to produce secondary metabolites with antimicrobial properties underscores their potential for pharmaceutical, agricultural and biotechnological applications, and it strengthens the case for protecting seagrass meadows not only as habitats for charismatic marine life but as living libraries of undiscovered biology.

Subject of Research: Endophytic marine Actinomycetota from Oceana serrulata seagrass and their antimicrobial activity

Article Title: Putative novel endophytic marine Actinomycetota from Oceana serrulata seagrass: molecular characterization and antimicrobial activity

Article References: Mbusi, L. D., Chibona, J. I., & Lyimo, T. J. (2026). Putative novel endophytic marine Actinomycetota from Oceana serrulata seagrass: molecular characterization and antimicrobial activity. Plant Biosystems, 160(5), Article 267. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44473-026-00282-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44473-026-00282-7

Keywords: seagrass, Actinomycetota, endophytes, antimicrobial activity, marine microbiology, antibiotic resistance, bioprospecting, Tanzania, 16S rRNA sequencing, Microbacterium, Diaminobutyricimonas, natural products

The genus Litophyton, which belongs to the octocoral order Alcyonacea, comprises nearly 100 species distributed across tropical and temperate seas. Colonies can grow up to 80 centimeters tall and appear in pale olive-green, yellow, and grey shades, with a central stalk radiating branches in a characteristic bushy form. Chemically, the genus has earned a reputation as a treasure trove: more than 200 metabolites have been identified from Litophyton species worldwide, including steroids, terpenoids, and meroterpenes, some of which display cytotoxic, antiviral, and antimicrobial properties. Recent work on Litophyton brassicum from the South China Sea described meroterpenes with antibacterial activity against pathogenic strains, while other species have yielded compounds capable of inhibiting HIV protease. Yet the authors note that comprehensive antioxidant evaluation and metabolite profiling of specimens from North Borneo, one of the world’s most biodiverse marine regions, remained conspicuously absent from the literature.

To close that gap, the team obtained collection permits from the Sabah Biodiversity Centre and gathered specimens by scuba diving on July 23 and 24, 2024. Species identity was confirmed molecularly rather than by morphology alone: DNA was extracted from 25 milligrams of homogenized coral tissue, and the 18S ribosomal RNA gene was amplified using the EukA and EukB primer pairs under a standardized polymerase chain reaction protocol. The resulting sequences were compared against the NCBI database to verify that the organism was indeed a member of Litophyton. This molecular confirmation matters in a genus where visual identification can be deceptive and where synonymies, such as the historical merging of Nephthea into Litophyton, have complicated comparisons across older studies.

Back at the Borneo Marine Research Institute, the researchers cleaned the coral of symbiotic animals, cut it to increase surface area, and subjected it to methanol maceration for 72 hours at 27 degrees Celsius with shaking at 120 revolutions per minute, repeating the process with fresh solvent to ensure exhaustive extraction. After rotary evaporation of the combined filtrates, the procedure yielded a crude extract corresponding to 2.82 percent of the starting material. That modest yield is typical for soft coral extraction, but the chemical diversity packed into it proved far more interesting than its mass.

Antioxidant capacity was measured with two complementary radical-scavenging assays. In the DPPH assay, which tracks the bleaching of a stable purple radical at 517 nanometers, the extract showed an IC50 value of 42.63 plus or minus 2.98 milligrams per milliliter, meaning that concentration was needed to neutralize half of the radicals present. The ABTS assay, which generates a green radical cation monitored at 734 nanometers, returned a notably better IC50 of 24.53 plus or minus 2.55 milligrams per milliliter. The authors place these numbers in context: a methanol-dichloromethane extract of the related Nephthea from Sulawesi showed far stronger activity, while an ethyl acetate fraction of the same genus was far weaker. The comparison underscores how extraction solvent, chemical composition, and environment jointly shape the antioxidant signature of these animals.

Quantifying the classical antioxidant compound classes produced a revealing result. Total phenolic content came in at just 0.017 milligrams of gallic acid equivalents per gram, while total flavonoid content reached 0.129 milligrams of quercetin equivalents per gram. Both values are low, which fits the known chemistry of the genus: Litophyton species predominantly manufacture terpenoids, particularly sesquiterpenes, rather than the polyphenols that dominate antioxidant activity in plants. Intriguingly, the flavonoid measurement exceeded the phenolic measurement, and qualitative screening confirmed the presence of both flavonoids and phenolic flavonoids. The researchers argue that the extract’s measurable radical-scavenging capacity cannot be attributed to phenolics alone; alkaloids, steroids, saponins, tannins, and terpenoids, all detected in the qualitative screen, are also recognized contributors to antioxidant potential. Anthraquinones and anthocyanosides, by contrast, were absent.

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy added a structural layer to the analysis. The spectrum displayed a broad hydroxyl stretch near 3335 wavenumbers, consistent with alcohols and phenolic compounds; a sharp carbon-hydrogen stretch at 2925 wavenumbers typical of aliphatic hydrocarbons; a peak near 1981 wavenumbers in the triple-bond region, suggestive of alkynes or nitriles though possibly an overtone band; a strong carbonyl signal at 1731 wavenumbers characteristic of aldehydes and ketones; and an alkene-related carbon-carbon double-bond stretch at 1643 wavenumbers. Because the sample was a crude extract rather than a purified compound, the fingerprint region below 1500 wavenumbers was excluded from interpretation, but the functional groups identified align well with a mixture rich in fatty acids, terpenoids, and oxygenated organics.

The centerpiece of the study is the liquid chromatography-quadrupole Orbitrap mass spectrometry profiling, run in both positive and negative ionization modes and analyzed with Compound Discoverer software against the mzCloud and ChemSpider databases. Positive mode revealed 57 metabolites spanning a striking range of chemical classes: fatty acids led at 17 percent, followed by fatty amides at 13 percent and aromatic compounds at 9 percent, with amino acids, terpenoids, and heterocyclic compounds each at 7 percent, and alkaloids and steroids at 6 percent. Negative mode detected 18 metabolites dominated by purines at 29 percent, followed by aromatics at 22 percent and fatty amides at 17 percent. Among the identified molecules were several with well-documented antioxidant credentials: trigonelline, an alkaloid known to scavenge reactive oxygen species and confer neuroprotection in models of Alzheimer’s disease; citral, a monoterpenoid that neutralizes free radicals and modulates antioxidant enzymes; acetyl-L-carnitine, which upregulates glutathione defenses; arachidonic acid, a precursor of redox-regulating eicosanoids; and docosahexaenoic acid, the omega-3 fatty acid that raises intracellular glutathione and exhibits anti-inflammatory effects. Pinolenic acid, creatine, jasmone, and dehydroepiandrosterone also appeared, the latter drawing attention for reported anticancer properties, while negative-mode compounds such as adenine, nipecotic acid, isoleucine, and anatabine carry antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory resumes of their own.

The authors are careful to frame the findings within their limits. The work relied on crude extracts, in vitro assays, and specimens from a single location and season, so the results cannot yet be generalized across the genus or the region. Still, the implications are considerable. A soft coral once valued mainly for its ornamental appeal emerges as a plausible source of natural antioxidant agents for functional foods, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals, and the researchers point specifically to aquaculture, where such compounds could support disease management and strengthen seafood security. The next steps they propose are the classic progression of marine drug discovery: isolation and characterization of pure metabolites, mechanistic and synergy studies to explain how the observed activity arises from the mixture, standardized extraction protocols to improve yield and reproducibility, and sustainable harvesting or cultivation strategies that protect the reefs that produce these molecules in the first place. For now, the waters of North Borneo have added a new entry to the growing catalogue of marine organisms whose chemistry may one day translate into medicine.

Subject of Research: Antioxidant activity and metabolite profiling of the marine soft coral Litophyton sp. from Sepanggar Island, North Borneo, Malaysia

Article Title: Elucidation of antioxidant activity and metabolite profiling of the marine soft coral Litophyton sp.

Article References: Fauzi, F. A., Yong, Y. S., Tan, J. K., Chong, E. T. J., Ringgit, G., Siddiquee, S., Tayyab, M., Shapawi, R., & Shah, M. D. (2026). Elucidation of antioxidant activity and metabolite profiling of the marine soft coral Litophyton sp.. Blue Biotechnology, 3(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44315-026-00052-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44315-026-00052-2

Keywords: Litophyton, soft coral, antioxidant, metabolomics, LC-MS, North Borneo, marine natural products, DPPH assay, ABTS assay, fatty acids, trigonelline, bioprospecting

The research team, led by scientists from Pondicherry University’s Andaman Campus, Nagasaki University, and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, systematically evaluated hundreds of studies to build the case that enzymes evolved under punishing marine conditions possess biochemical properties that terrestrial counterparts simply cannot replicate. Marine microbes thrive in salinities reaching five molar sodium chloride, temperatures spanning from subzero to above 100 degrees Celsius, and hydrostatic pressures exceeding 100 megapascals. These extremes have forged enzymes with exceptional thermostability, halotolerance, psychrophilicity, and catalytic efficiency, properties that translate directly into advantages for biomedical applications where conventional enzymes and drugs often fail.

The urgency of the search is underscored by sobering epidemiological data. A 2024 systematic analysis in The Lancet attributed 1.27 million direct deaths and 4.95 million associated deaths to bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019 alone, with forecasts projecting 1.91 million direct attributable deaths and 8.22 million associated deaths annually by 2050. Without accelerated intervention, the cumulative toll between 2025 and 2050 could reach 39 million deaths. Meanwhile, chronic inflammation quietly drives autoimmune disease, cardiovascular pathology, and neurodegeneration, while many existing cancer drugs suffer from off-target toxicity and eventual treatment resistance. The review positions marine enzymes as a fundamentally different therapeutic class capable of addressing all three challenges simultaneously.

In the inflammation arena, the standouts are superoxide dismutases, laccases, and chitinases. Superoxide dismutase catalyzes the dismutation of the superoxide anion into hydrogen peroxide and molecular oxygen, intercepting reactive oxygen species before they can generate the highly destructive peroxynitrite that damages lipids, proteins, and mitochondria. Marine versions, particularly the nickel-containing SOD found in cyanobacteria such as Prochlorococcus marinus, exhibit faster reaction rates and greater oxidative stress tolerance than conventional copper-zinc enzymes. In animal models of carrageenan-induced edema, marine SOD treatment reduced swelling, malondialdehyde levels, nitric oxide synthase activity, and leukocyte infiltration, while suppressing the master inflammatory transcription factor NF-κB and lowering secretion of the cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6. The commercially developed TetraSOD ingredient, derived from the microalga Tetraselmis chuii, demonstrated antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits in a rat model of metabolic syndrome, suggesting near-term applications in autoimmune, neuroinflammatory, and metabolic disorders.

Marine laccases, multicopper oxidases produced by fungi and bacteria in environments ranging from Antarctic waters to hypersaline lagoons, complement this antioxidant arsenal. Unlike peroxidases, which require hydrogen peroxide as a co-substrate and can become unstable during clinical use, laccases directly use molecular oxygen to oxidize phenolic inflammatory mediators. They also suppress NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways in vitro, reducing IL-6 and TNF-α release. Chitinases add a third mechanism by hydrolyzing chitin into chitooligosaccharides that engage the pattern recognition receptors TLR9 and NOD2, triggering production of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10. Recent work suggests the chitinase CHIT1 promotes microglial phagocytosis of amyloid plaques in models of Alzheimer’s disease, hinting at neuroprotective applications.

The oncology story is equally compelling, built on the principle of exploiting metabolic vulnerabilities unique to tumor cells. Marine-derived L-asparaginase, isolated from organisms including Bacillus tequilensis, Streptomyces species, and marine fungi, starves asparagine-dependent cancer cells by depleting extracellular L-asparagine, which activates p53-mediated apoptotic signaling and triggers mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization, cytochrome c release, and caspase activation. One marine fungal asparaginase achieved an IC50 of 3.79 micrograms per milliliter against HCT-116, HepG2, and MCF-7 cancer cell lines, and importantly, marine variants show reduced glutaminase-associated toxicity and lower hypersensitivity potential compared with the Escherichia coli formulations currently used in leukemia therapy. Marine L-glutaminases from Halomonas meridiana and Halomonas aquamarina target glutamine-addicted colorectal tumors, with reported IC50 values of 7.0 and 13.2 micrograms per milliliter against LS 174 T and HCT-116 cells respectively, inducing endoplasmic reticulum stress and mitochondrial damage through cyclophilin A-caspase signaling.

Beyond nutrient starvation, marine enzymes attack tumors through oxidative and structural routes. Laccases from marine Streptomyces generate reactive oxygen species that preferentially damage tumor mitochondria, activating Bax, releasing cytochrome c, and downregulating the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, while oxidase-inspired nanozyme systems have demonstrated ferroptosis-mediated tumor suppression with negligible systemic toxicity in preclinical models. Alkaline proteases from marine Streptomyces and Pseudoalteromonas species degrade collagen, fibronectin, and laminin in the tumor extracellular matrix, disrupting integrin signaling, softening stromal mechanics, and interfering with the invasive architecture that shields tumors from immune surveillance and drug penetration. Because tumor and normal tissues differ in nutrient dependence, redox balance, and matrix composition, these enzyme strategies achieve a degree of selectivity that conventional chemotherapy struggles to match.

The most dramatic results, however, may lie in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Biofilms, the sticky extracellular polymeric fortresses that pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus construct to shield themselves from antibiotics and immune attack, are a leading cause of chronic, treatment-refractory infections. Marine alginate lyases from Flavobacterium, Sphingomonas, and Pseudoalteromonas carrageenovora specifically cleave the alginate strands of Pseudomonas biofilms, and when combined with the antibiotic ceftobiprole, achieved biofilm reductions of 60 to 69 percent, dramatically enhancing antibiotic penetration compared with antibiotic treatment alone. Serine and alkaline proteases bearing the catalytic Ser-His-Asp triad degrade bacterial surface proteins and biofilm matrix components, lowering minimum inhibitory concentrations of co-administered antibiotics, while marine chitinases breach fungal cell walls and affect Gram-positive bacteria. Collagenases and thiol proteases further destabilize established biofilms in models of persistent infection.

Yet the path from laboratory promise to clinical reality remains steep. Most marine enzymes evolved for conditions far from the human body’s 37 degrees Celsius and near-neutral pH, so protein engineering, PEGylation, and nanoparticle encapsulation are often needed to ensure physiological compatibility. The vast majority of ocean microbes cannot be cultured in the laboratory, a problem known as the great plate count anomaly, locking countless candidate enzymes within microbial dark matter, though metagenomics, single-cell genomics, and functional screening are now bypassing the need for cultivation. No pharmacokinetic profiles, immunogenicity assessments, or clinical trial data yet exist for these candidates, and regulatory pathways for marine-derived enzyme therapeutics remain underdeveloped. Directed evolution and recombinant expression systems have already demonstrated more than 100-fold improvements in catalytic efficiency for engineered protein systems, and artificial intelligence-guided discovery promises to accelerate identification of optimal candidates.

The review’s authors argue that the coming decade offers a transformational window if researchers prioritize preclinical validation, dose optimization, and early-phase human trials for the most advanced candidates, particularly asparaginase isoforms and alginate lyases. They also stress that bioprospecting must proceed under the Nagoya Protocol and ocean conservation frameworks to ensure that the exploitation of these genetic resources protects the very biodiversity that produced them. With antimicrobial resistance projected to claim tens of millions of lives by mid-century and inflammatory and oncological disease burdens rising worldwide, the humble enzymes of ocean microbes, refined by eons of evolutionary pressure in Earth’s most hostile environments, may prove to be among the most valuable biomedical resources humanity has yet to fully harvest.

Subject of Research: Marine microbial enzymes as therapeutic agents against chronic inflammation, cancer, and antimicrobial resistance

Article Title: Marine microbial enzymes as the next frontier in combating chronic inflammation, cancer, and global antimicrobial resistance

Article References: Kumar, A., Soratur, A., Kumar, S., Sarkar, A., Thiruchitrambalam, G., & Venmathi Maran, B. A. (2026). Marine microbial enzymes as the next frontier in combating chronic inflammation, cancer, and global antimicrobial resistance. Discover Oceans, 3(1), Article 49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44289-026-00161-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44289-026-00161-1

Keywords: marine microbial enzymes, extremozymes, antimicrobial resistance, chronic inflammation, superoxide dismutase, L-asparaginase, alginate lyase, biofilm disruption, cancer therapy, marine biotechnology, NF-kB signaling, bioprospecting