Metabolomic Profiling and Molecular Networking of Nudibranch-Associated sp. SCSIO 001680.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are the primary source of one of the growing public health problems that requires global attention, indicating an urgent need for new antibiotics. Marine ecosystems are characterized by high biodiversity and are considered one of the essential sources of bioactive chemical compounds. Bacterial associates of marine invertebrates are commonly a source of active medicinal and natural products and are important sources for drug discovery. Hence, marine invertebrate-associated microbiomes are a fruitful resource for excavating novel genes and bioactive compounds. In a previous study, we isolated sp. SCSIO 001680, coded as strain 63, from the Red Sea nudibranch , which exhibited antimicrobial and antitumor activity. In addition, this isolate harbors several natural product biosynthetic gene clusters, suggesting it has the potential to produce bioactive natural products. The present study aimed to investigate the metabolic profile of the isolated sp. SCSIO 001680 (strain 63) and to predict their potential role in the host's survival. The crude metabolic extracts of strain 63 cultivated in two different media were characterized by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry. The metabolomics approach provided us with characteristic chemical fingerprints of the cellular processes and the relative abundance of specific compounds. The Global Products Social Molecular Networking database was used to identify the metabolites. While 434 metabolites were detected in the extracts, only a few compounds were identified based on the standards and the public spectral libraries, including desferrioxamines, marineosin A, and bisucaberin, halichoblelide, alternarin A, pachastrelloside A, streptodepsipeptide P1 1B, didemnaketal F, and alexandrolide. This finding suggests that this strain harbors several novel compounds. In addition, the metabolism of the microbiome of marine invertebrates remains poorly represented. Thus, our data constitute a valuable complement to the study of metabolism in the host microbiome.