Bioactive molecules from the alga Oophila that influence salamander immunity and regeneration
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Abstract
Interactions in nature are a source of chemical innovation. When vying for space and resources, fungi and microbes engage in chemical warfare. Plants produce compounds to defend themselves against predation. Pathogens confound, suppress, and evade our immune system by releasing molecules that influence our bodies. Many of the molecules involved in these natural processes have been co-opted by humans for use in our fight against disease. A classic example is the antibiotic penicillin. Penicillin, discovered in 1928, is a molecule produced by a fungus that stops many types of bacteria from growing, presumably to give the fungus a competitive advantage over the resource-consuming bacteria. It took over a decade to develop penicillin as a therapeutic, but once mass production was available it changed medicine and saved countless lives. Following the success of penicillin, many potent antibiotics were isolated from similar antagonisms, particularly among soil bacteria, from the 1950's to the 1970's. Progress in finding new therapeutics from nature eventually slowed as we exhausted the chemical inventory of drugs that can be found using the methods of the early pioneers. In the 1980's through the early 2000's the focus for drug discovery shifted towards combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening of new, synthetic molecules. Ultimately, however, combinatorial chemistry has had limited success. Today, with the advent of new technologies for exploring biological interactions, there is a renewed focus on the biological world for drug discovery. Evolution is an excellent chemist. One frontier of biological research is in symbioses, the intimate association of two or more organisms. In symbiosis research we seek to understand the forces driving the interactions, the effects the interacting partners have on one another, and the chemical dialog levied between partners. These interactions can take many forms, from bacteria in our guts communicating with our immune cells, to algae taking up residence inside animal cells and providing them with energy. Symbiosis research represents a shift from randomly searching for natural antagonisms to exploring the subtle dialog between partners that coexist. Sometimes that co-existence is defensive and a skin bacterium may produce an antifungal molecule that protects its host from infection. Other times the co-existence might be nutritional where a symbiont produces a vitamin or amino acid that the host cannot easily obtain. Molecules produced during symbioses are emerging targets for the new generation of therapeutics.
