Therapeutically Active Biomolecules from Marine Actinomycetes

For the past few centuries, the biological sources of terrestrial origin have been explored and exploited for bioactive metabolites. This has resulted in the stagnancy of discovering either novel compounds or compounds with novel bioactivities. Thus, researchers across the globe have started exploring our big Oceans, for the search of bioactive metabolites. During the past few decades, the research on bioactive metabolites from marine biological resources has geared up and among the sources marine actinomycetes are proved to be best. Marine actinomycetes, the filamentous bacteria from marine environment have been intensively studied for bioactive metabolites. The biological diversity of marine actinomycetes was found to be enormous, thanks to culture dependent and culture independent biodiversity approaches. This great diversity of marine actinomycetes has offered greater chemical diversity. The diverse chemical compounds of marine actinomycetes have been found to have various biological activities such as antimicrobial, anti-tumor, anti-malarial, anti-algal, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory etc. These various bioactive metabolites of marine actinomycetes are having scope for developing as potent therapeutic agents. The potential of marine actinomycetes is rightly realized though the current biological wealth of these organisms is relatively unexplored.