Marine algal sources

Marine Algal Sources for Treating Bacterial Diseases... 

This chapter is focused on the marine algal sources for treating bacterial diseases, and emphasis would be on marine algae and their extracts/bioactive compoimds treating various types of bacterial diseases. 

Changes in abundance and isotopic composition of biomarker compounds can help delineate relative mass contributions from terrestrial, marine algal, and bacterial OM sources, as well as provide indications of specific processes and environmental conditions in ancient water... 

Marine and Algal Oils. The amount and type of long-chain n-3 fatty acids in marine and algal sources are varied (Table 1). 

It is well established that the principal source of secondary metabolites in marine molluscs resides in the sometimes selective concentration of chemicals contained in their food. The chemical connection between molluscan predator and its algal or invertebrate diet has been confirmed as a result of many investigations of the chemistry of herbivorous [6] and carnivorous [3] molluscs and their dietary sources. However, the assumption often reported, as in a recent review [7], that marine molluscs invariably obtain their metabolites from dietary sources, should be regarded as an oversimplification. In fact, active biosynthesis of secondary metabolites has been ascertained in several cases, as documented here. 

Cyanobacterial toxins (both marine and freshwater) are functionally and chemically a diverse group of secondary chemicals. They show structure and function similarities to higher plant and algal toxins. Of particular importance to this publication is the production of toxins which appear to be identical with saxitoxin and neosaxitoxin. Since these are the primary toxins involved in cases of paralytic shellfish poisons, these aphantoxins could be a source of PSP standards and the study of their production by Aphanizomenon can provide information on the biosynthesis of PSP s. The cyanobacteria toxins have not received extensive attention since they have fewer vectors by which they come in contact with humans. As freshwater supplies become more eutrophicated and as cyanobacteria are increasingly used as a source of single cell protein toxic cyanobacteria will have increased importance (39). The study of these cyanobacterial toxins can contribute to a better understanding of seafood poisons. 

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