School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
Mar Drugs. 2020 Jan 30;18(2):90. doi: 10.3390/md18020090.
Eukaryotic algae are an extremely diverse category of photosynthetic organisms and some species produce highly potent bioactive compounds poisonous to humans or other animals, most notably observed during harmful algal blooms. These natural products include some of the most poisonous small molecules known and unique cyclic polyethers. However, the diversity and complexity of algal genomes means that sequencing-based research has lagged behind research into more readily sequenced microbes, such as bacteria and fungi. Applying informatics techniques to the algal genomes that are now available reveals new natural product biosynthetic pathways, with different groups of algae containing different types of pathways. There is some evidence for gene clusters and the biosynthetic logic of polyketides enables some prediction of these final products. For other pathways, it is much more challenging to predict the products and there may be many gene clusters that are not identified with the automated tools. These results suggest that there is a great diversity of biosynthetic capacity for natural products encoded in the genomes of algae and suggest areas for future research focus.
真核藻类是一类具有极强多样性的光合生物，一些物种产生的生物活性化合物对人类或其他动物具有很强的毒性，在有害藻华期间最为明显。这些天然产物包括一些已知的最毒小分子和独特的环状聚醚。然而，藻类基因组的多样性和复杂性意味着基于测序的研究落后于对更容易测序的微生物（如细菌和真菌）的研究。将信息学技术应用于现有的藻类基因组揭示了新的天然产物生物合成途径，不同类别的藻类含有不同类型的途径。有一些证据表明存在基因簇，而聚酮化合物的生物合成逻辑使得可以对这些最终产物进行一些预测。对于其他途径，预测这些产物要困难得多，而且可能有许多基因簇没有被自动化工具识别。这些结果表明，藻类基因组中编码的天然产物的生物合成能力具有很大的多样性，并为未来的研究重点提供了方向。
