Sorting the Myriad Medicinal Molecules of Coral Reefs
A new study led by 色情视频 biologists introduces a method to screen unknown molecules for their therapeutic potential.
Yet many thousands more coral reef molecules with medicinal potential are unknown to science. A study led by 色情视频 biologists describes a promising new method for screening the molecular output of reef life for important chemical properties, which could make it much easier to identify the next generation of coral reef鈥揹erived drugs and better understand the diversity of molecules found in the ocean.
鈥淲e know what so few of these molecules are and what they do,鈥� said the paper鈥檚 lead author, Aaron Hartmann, a postdoctoral biologist with a dual appointment at 色情视频 and the Smithsonian Institution. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a pretty big roadblock to developing therapeutic drugs derived from them.鈥�
Hartmann led the study alongside 色情视频 biologist Forest Rohwer and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany; Imperial College London; the CARMABI Foundation Cura莽ao; the University of Amsterdam, and Bangor University in Wales. Rohwer co-leads the , a world leader in viral ecology research.
Molecular fingerprints
Working with chemist Pieter Dorrestein鈥檚 laboratory at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at UC San Diego, the researchers analyzed tissue samples from corals, algae and fungus in the central Pacific Ocean.They isolated each organism鈥檚 molecules and sent them through an instrument called a mass spectrometer that measured each molecule鈥檚 mass. Next, they broke the molecules apart and measured the masses of those pieces.
Molecules tend to break apart in predictable ways, so by measuring the mass of these chemical pieces, the researchers were able to come up with a set of 鈥渕olecular fingerprints鈥濃�攑atterns in the chemical profiles that point to the presence of particular molecules.
However, knowing its chemical fingerprint alone can鈥檛 tell you what a specific molecule does if it hasn鈥檛 been described before. The database of known molecules represents only a very small fraction of the molecules that exist, Hartmann explained.
To get around that limitation, the researchers next employed an ingenious trick. They used an algorithm created in Dorrestein鈥檚 lab to screen these molecular fingerprints, and if the chemical makeups of two unknown molecules were similar, they were flagged as related molecules. Hartmann and Daniel Petras, a postdoctoral chemist at UC San Diego, then explored the chemical reactions of these unknown molecules to get a better idea of how they behave.
This analysis helps answer a long-standing mystery in marine biology: Why do coral reefs have such vast molecular diversity? Comparing even very closely related organisms, the researchers discovered each had different molecular fingerprints, suggesting that these organisms can modify the same molecules differently to suit their particular biological niches.In other words, even closely related organisms might face different health challenges depending on their geographic location, for example, and therefore tweak their molecules just slightly to better defend themselves. The researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Potential therapeutic value
鈥淢olecular relatedness can tell you about the potential chemical reactions exhibited by these unknown molecules,鈥� Hartmann said. 鈥淭hat, in turn, can tell you something about their potential therapeutic value.鈥�
So instead of screening each individual molecule one-by-one to see if it has medicinal properties, this technique would allow drug discovery scientists to easily hunt for chemical properties exhibited by known drugs. These newly discovered molecules might have benefits over known drugs鈥攎ore potent, for example, or with fewer side effects.
鈥淯sing this method, we鈥檙e not held back by the fact that our molecular database is pretty sparse,鈥� Hartmann said. 鈥淚f you know what chemical reactions are important, you can then go looking for molecules with those properties.鈥�
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the European Union and the German Research Foundation
