Effect of fatty Amazon fish consumption on lipid metabolism

OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of feeding diets enriched with fatty fish from the Amazon basin on lipid metabolism. METHODS: Male Wistar rats were divided into four groups: control group treated with commercial chow; Mapará group was fed diet enriched with Hypophthalmus edentatus; Matrinxã group was fed diet enriched with Brycon spp.; and, Tambaqui group was fed diet enriched with Colossoma macropomum. Rats with approximately 240g±0.60 of body weight were fed ad libitum for 30 days, and then were sacrificed for collection of whole blood and tissues. RESULTS: The groups treated with enriched diets showed a significant reduction in body mass and lipogenesis in the epididymal and retroperitoneal adipose tissues and carcass when compared with the control group. However, lipogenesis in the liver showed an increase in Matrinxã group compared with the others groups. The levels of serum triglycerides in the treated groups with Amazonian fish were significantly lower than those of the control group. Moreover, total cholesterol concentration only decreased in the group Matrinxã. High Density Lipoprotein cholesterol levels increased significantly in the Mapará and Tambaqui compared with control group and Matrinxã group. The insulin and leptin levels increased significantly in all treatment groups. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that diets enriched with fatty fish from the Amazon basin changed the lipid metabolism by reducing serum triglycerides and increasing high density lipoprotein-cholesterol in rats fed with diets enriched with Mapará, Matrinxã, and Tambaqui

Venomics-accelerated cone snail venom peptide discovery

Cone snail venoms are considered a treasure trove of bioactive peptides. Despite over 800 species of cone snails being known, each producing over 1000 venom peptides, only about 150 unique venom peptides are structurally and functionally characterized. To overcome the limitations of the traditional low-throughput bio-discovery approaches, multi-omics systems approaches have been introduced to accelerate venom peptide discovery and characterisation. This "venomic" approach is starting to unravel the full complexity of cone snail venoms and to provide new insights into their biology and evolution. The main challenge for venomics is the effective integration of transcriptomics, proteomics, and pharmacological data and the efficient analysis of big datasets. Novel database search tools and visualisation techniques are now being introduced that facilitate data exploration, with ongoing advances in related omics fields being expected to further enhance venomics studies. Despite these challenges and future opportunities, cone snail venomics has already exponentially expanded the number of novel venom peptide sequences identified from the species investigated, although most novel conotoxins remain to be pharmacologically characterised. Therefore, efficient high-throughput peptide production systems and/or banks of miniaturized discovery assays are required to overcome this bottleneck and thus enhance cone snail venom bioprospecting and accelerate the identification of novel drug leads

Marine symbiotic microorganisms: a new dimension in natural product research

This chapter discusses the marine-derived symbiotic microorganisms and their metabolites with special emphasis on biological activities. Recently, marine microorganisms, bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes, and their associated viruses have gained increasing attention due to their great potential in natural product research. Novel molecular approaches facilitated the identification of symbiotic marine microorganisms, and the development of culture techniques strengthened the journey. Chemically diverse and biologically significant metabolites of marine symbiotic microbes gained considerable popularity among natural product researchers within a short period of time. Symbiotic microbial communities of marine origin undoubtedly brought a new wave to marine natural product research. With respect to lead compound exploration, this is an indispensable source of potent biologically active compounds and could be a sustainable approach to explore marine chemical diversity

Marine nutraceuticals

Marine resources are gaining much attention as a gold mine of biologically active materials with healing power. Most of these metabolites have shown unique structural and functional features compared to their terrestrial counterparts. With the understanding of the requirement and the benefits of nutraceutical supplementation to prevent increasing incidences of life-style-related diseases, marine nutraceuticals has gained high demands worldwide. Among large number of marine nutraceuticals, omega-3 fatty acids, carotenoids, chitin oligosaccharides, glucosamine, collagen, and fucoidan are popularly consumed. This chapter presents a brief review of the beneficial effects of these marine nutraceuticals and their market positioning. Moreover, the need for research and development in this area to overcome the market challenges is also discussed

Medicinal Effects of Phlorotannins from Marine Brown Algae

Brown seaweeds are popular and abundant food in East Asia and also well known for their medicinal effects due to presence of active phenolic constituents. Phlorotannins, the major phenolic group of brown algae, have extensively investigated for their vast array of bioactivities such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antidiabetic. They possess promising activity in both in vitro and in vivo systems showing promising potential to further develop as therapeutic agents. In this chapter, attempts have taken to examine and categorize the reports available on active phlorotannins which have shown strong bioactivities

Marine microalgal metabolites a promising source of pharmaceuticals

Microalgae are microscopic organisms with a worldwide distribution in both freshwater and marine environments (Chacón-Lee and González-Mariño 2010). They are photosynthetic in nature and effectively utilize the solar energy to produce complex organic metabolites. Among all microalgal classes, marine microalgae have adapted to adverse conditions throughout their evolution due to the stress conditions in their habitat such as temperature variations, salinity, osmotic pressure, ultraviolet rays, and pH differences, and therefore marine microalgae have the potency to produce novel metabolites (Tandeau-de-Marsac and Houmard, 1993). Microalgae have been treated as a source of fish feed for years, until scientists understood the great potential in microalgae in many applications such as biofuel, bio-ethanol, nutrition supplement, and pharmaceutical agents. Due to recent identification of this great potential, much study has not been conducted till date exploring bioactive compounds from microalgae. However, the limited studies on this aspect have already established that the microalgal metabolites are highly bioactive. Being the primary producers of the sea, it is generally believed that many of the active compounds isolated from marine resources have actually been synthesized in microalgae and then passed into other members in food chain

Accelerated proteomic visualization of individual predatory venoms of Conus purpurascens reveals separately evolved predation-evoked venom cabals

Abstract Cone snail venoms have separately evolved for predation and defense. Despite remarkable inter- and intra-species variability, defined sets of synergistic venom peptides (cabals) are considered essential for prey capture by cone snails. To better understand the role of predatory cabals in cone snails, we used a high-throughput proteomic data mining and visualisation approach. Using this approach, the relationship between the predatory venom peptides from nine C. purpurascens was systematically analysed. Surprisingly, potentially synergistic levels of κ-PVIIA and δ-PVIA were only identified in five of nine specimens. In contrast, the remaining four specimens lacked significant levels of these known excitotoxins and instead contained high levels of the muscle nAChR blockers ψ-PIIIE and αA-PIVA. Interestingly, one of nine specimens expressed both cabals, suggesting that these sub-groups might represent inter-breeding sub-species of C. purpurascens. High throughput cluster analysis also revealed these two cabals clustered with distinct groups of venom peptides that are presently uncharacterised. This is the first report showing that the cone snails of the same species can deploy two separate and distinct predatory cabals for prey capture and shows that the cabals deployed by this species can be more complex than presently realized. Our semi-automated proteomic analysis facilitates the deconvolution of complex venoms to identify co-evolved families of peptides and help unravel their evolutionary relationships in complex venoms

Sea Cucumber Saponins: Realization of Their Anticancer Effects

The search for natural products that can be used novel and effective pharmaceutical agents has gained much attention in natural product and pharmacology research. Among marine resources, marine animals have proven to be rich sources of interesting organic molecules, which have accumulated in them over years of evolution. Most of the marine invertebrates are sessile and are constantly targeted by the predators. To defend against these threats, these organisms are capable of releasing potent chemicals. A great number of compounds from marine invertebrates with diverse structural features and sound biological activities have been reported and reviewed in the literature. Among these, the compounds isolated from sea cucumbers are gaining more attention recently due to the presence of interesting compounds with potent biological activities. Sea cucumbers are soft-bodied wormlike echinoderms, which belong to the class Holothuroidea (De Moncerrat Iiguez-Martinez et al. 2005). They have economic importance in Asian countries, specifically in China where several species are used in traditional medicine or eaten as delicacies. The taxonomical distribution of sea cucumbers consist of six main orders (Apodida, Elasipodida, Aspidochirotida, Molpadiida, Dendrochirotida, and Dactylochirotida), which includes 25 families, about 200 genera, and more than 1400 species. Sea cucumbers can be found in nearly every marine environment, but are most diverse on tropical shallow-water coral reefs

Transcriptomics in pain research: insights from new and old technologies

Despite significant advances in our understanding of the molecular basis of pain, the precise contributions of individual genes to our perception of this primal sensation remains incomplete. However, transcriptomic studies - providing a snapshot of the mRNA expression of a given cell or tissue - have considerably increased insight into the gene expression fingerprint of specific sensory neuronal subtypes, as well as gene expression changes that occur in diverse pathologies associated with pain. Moreover, transcriptomic studies have accelerated the identification of venom-derived peptides that may provide novel leads for the development of analgesics. This review discusses some of the key techniques, insights and limitations of transcriptomic studies that have contributed to pain research and highlights how the application of transcriptomics can be used to accelerate analgesic venom peptide drug discovery

Sea cucumber, Stichopus japonicus ethyl acetate fraction modulates the lipopolysaccharide induced iNOS and COX-2 via MAPK signaling pathway in murine macrophages

The sea cucumber Stichopus japonicus is an important food and traditional medicine in Asian countries. However, ethyl acetate solvent fraction of S. japonicus (SCEA-F) is largely unknown for its anti-inflammatory activity and related molecular mechanisms. In this study, effect of SCEA-F on inflammation was investigated in LPS stimulated RAW264.7 cells. SCEA-F significantly inhibited the productions of NO and PGE by inhibiting iNOS and COX-2 at their protein and gene levels. The production and the gene transcription of pro-inflammatory cytokines are also inhibited. The responsible molecular signaling for these inhibitory actions was found to be through suppression of the phosphorylation of MAPK molecules; ERK and p38 MAPK. These results indicate that SCEA-F inhibits LPS-induced inflammatory response via blocking of MAPK signaling pathway in murine macrophages, thus demonstrated its in vitro anti-inflammatory potential. Therefore it could be suggested that SCEA-F could be effectively used in functional food preparations