Marine Drugs

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Dear Colleagues,

Marine-derived biosurfactants have not been widely explored and despite their promising biotechnological applications, industrial uses are limited. Besides the difficulties associated with the isolation and culture of their producers, the main factors include their low yields, scarce structural elucidation and unknown biosynthetic pathways. The marine environment is extremely diverse and encloses a huge source of organisms potentially able to produce new biosurfactants with unique activities spanning from antimicrobial, anti-adhesive, anti-biofilm to anti-cancer, among others. This issue will include recent advances in the discovery of novel marine-derived biosurfactants with significant biological activities; the use of omics to explore the marine environment biodiversity and unravel the biosynthetic pathways involved in biosurfactants production; the physicochemical and functional characterization of marine-derived biosurfactants and their potential applications; the production and process scale-up of marine-biosurfactants; and the cost-efficiency of the production process, circular (bio)economy and industrial demands.

Prof. Lígia R. Rodrigues
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Marine Drugs is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Marine-derived biosurfactants
(Bio)prospection, Screening, Isolation, Culture
Metagenomics (sequence-based, function-based)
Structural characterization, Biosynthetic pathways
Antimicrobial activity, Anti-adhesive activity, Anti-biofilm activity, Anti-cancer activity, Anti-inflammatory activity, Antioxidant activity
Therapeutics, Nutraceuticals, Functional food, Cosmetics
Production, Recovery and Scale-up
Process Sustainability and Circular (Bio)economy

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 3970 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characterization of Antifungal Lipopeptide Biosurfactants Produced by Marine Bacterium Bacillus sp. CS30

by Shimei Wu, Ge Liu, Shengnan Zhou, Zhenxia Sha and Chaomin Sun

Mar. Drugs 2019, 17(4), 199; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/md17040199 - 29 Mar 2019

Cited by 54 | Viewed by 4275

Abstract

This study was initiated to screen for marine bacterial agents to biocontrol Magnaporthe grisea, a serious fungal pathogen of cereal crops. A bacterial strain, isolated from the cold seep in deep sea, exhibited strong growth inhibition against M. grisea, and the strain was identified and designated as Bacillus sp. CS30. The corresponding antifungal agents were purified by acidic precipitation, sequential methanol extraction, Sephadex LH-20 chromatography, and reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), and two antifungal peaks were obtained at the final purification step. After analysis by mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem MS, two purified antifungal agents were deduced to belong to the surfactin family, and designated as surfactin CS30-1 and surfactin CS30-2. Further investigation showed that although the antifungal activity of surfactin CS30-1 is higher than that of surfactin CS30-2, both of them induced the increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and caused serious damage to the cell wall and cytoplasm, thus leading to the cell death of M. grisea. Our results also show the differences of the antifungal activity and antifungal mechanism of the different surfactin homologs surfactin CS30-1 and surfactin CS30-2, and highlight them as potential promising agents to biocontrol plant diseases caused by M. grisea. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biotechnology Applications of Marine Biosurfactants)

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Review

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30 pages, 1697 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperReview

Marine Biosurfactants: Biosynthesis, Structural Diversity and Biotechnological Applications

by Sonja Kubicki, Alexander Bollinger, Nadine Katzke, Karl-Erich Jaeger, Anita Loeschcke and Stephan Thies

Mar. Drugs 2019, 17(7), 408; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/md17070408 - 09 Jul 2019

Cited by 102 | Viewed by 8819

Abstract

Biosurfactants are amphiphilic secondary metabolites produced by microorganisms. Marine bacteria have recently emerged as a rich source for these natural products which exhibit surface-active properties, making them useful for diverse applications such as detergents, wetting and foaming agents, solubilisers, emulsifiers and dispersants. Although precise structural data are often lacking, the already available information deduced from biochemical analyses and genome sequences of marine microbes indicates a high structural diversity including a broad spectrum of fatty acid derivatives, lipoamino acids, lipopeptides and glycolipids. This review aims to summarise biosyntheses and structures with an emphasis on low molecular weight biosurfactants produced by marine microorganisms and describes various biotechnological applications with special emphasis on their role in the bioremediation of oil-contaminated environments. Furthermore, novel exploitation strategies are suggested in an attempt to extend the existing biosurfactant portfolio. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biotechnology Applications of Marine Biosurfactants)

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