UNLABELLED Sponges are a rich source for investigation of bioactive small molecules. They have been mostly investigated for the search of new pharmacological models or therapeutic agents for the treatment of human diseases. Micro-organisms can also represent a virulent pathogen for marine invertebrates such as sponges, which need to protect themselves against these microbes. Sponges' self defen...

Selection of Taxa Porifera (sponges) are a diverse taxon of benthic aquatic (marine and limnic) animals, with over 8,500 described species distributed over four main extant lineages: Demospongiae (83% of living species; demosponges, including bath sponges), Hexactinellida (glass sponges), Calcarea (calcareous sponges), and Homoscleromorpha (flesh sponges) (Van Soest et al. 2012) (Fig. 2). Tradi...

BACKGROUND The approximately 350 demosponge species that have been described from Antarctica represent a faunistic component distinct from that of neighboring regions. Sponges provide structure to the Antarctic benthos and refuge to other invertebrates, and can be dominant in some communities. Despite the importance of sponges in the Antarctic subtidal environment, sponge DNA barcodes are scarc...

Production of bioactive compounds from marine benthic organisms is suggested to relate ecologically with environment. However, anthropogenic pressures cause a considerable damage to coral reefs environment. This research aimed to define the pattern sponges biopotential values at the increasing of anthropogenic pressures to coral reef environment. Three representative sponges were selected (Theo...

Methylated purine bases are frequently isolated from marine sponges and ascidians, and their presence is often associated with pronounced biological activity. Rapid dereplication of these compounds in polar extracts of sponges is complicated by dif®culties in their characterization. One such example is 1,3-dimethylisoguanine, (I), which has been described by three different groups but with diff...

Marine invertebrates including sponges, soft coral, tunicates, mollusks and bryozoan have proved to be a prolific source of bioactive natural products. Among marine-derived metabolites, terpenoids have provided a vast array of molecular architectures. These isoprenoid-derived metabolites also exhibit highly specialized biological activities ranging from nerve regeneration to blood-sugar regulat...

The marine environment has long been known to be species-rich and to be a source of molecules with interesting and beneficial biochemical and clinical properties. However, despite some notable successes the potential of the 'marine pipeline' has yet to be fully realized. Recent studies involving members of the nuclear receptor superfamily illustrate the chemical richness of molecules from marin...

Based on our theory, main triplets of amino acid residues have been discovered in cell-adhesion receptors (integrins) of marine sponges, which participate as homologies in the interface between two major immune molecules, MHC class I (MHCI) and CD8αβ. They appear as homologies also in several human neural receptor heteromers and subunits. The obtained results probably mean that neural and immun...