Nat Prod Rep Review: Advances in the Chemistry, Chemical Ecology and Drug Potential of Marine Molluscs

Marine mollusks, especially the nudibranchs of the subclass Diplopoda, are a class of benthic invertebrates with bright colors, slow movement, and no hard shell protection, also known as "marine butterfly".
)
.
Because these mollusks lost the protection of their hard physical shells, in order to survive evolution, they "smart" developed a chemical defense strategy, that is, they metabolized to produce a series of small molecular compounds as "chemical weapons" to defend against the upstream food chain animal prey to survive
.
This phenomenon provides researchers with a screening model that is different from traditional methods to find lead compounds of physiologically active drugs from nature
.
In recent years, the chemical ecological relationship (Prey-predator relationship) between mollusks and their upstream and downstream food chain organisms has become a frontier hotspot in marine natural product research
.
The secondary metabolites produced by many mollusks have been found to have important ecological significance and special biological functions, which has led to the elucidation of the chemical ecological relationship between them and their food sources
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At the same time, small-molecule compounds with chemical defense functions also show novel chemical diversity and wide range of biological activities and are being studied for drug-related development
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Molluscs have become an important class of drug source organisms in the research of new marine drugs
.

Recently, the team of Guo Yuewei from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences was invited last month to publish a review article on structural error correction and error analysis of marine natural products in Nat.
Prod.
Rep.
, an authoritative review journal in the field of natural products (https:// pubs.
rsc.
org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/np/d2np00023g), for the second time this year, I was invited to the title of "Recent Advance on the Marine Mollusks-derived Natural Products: Chemistry, Chemical Ecology and Therapeutical Potential".
A systematic and comprehensive review of the chemical structure types, chemical ecological effects, and pharmacological activities of secondary metabolites from marine mollusks reported internationally in the past ten years
.
This article was reported online in the latest issue of Nat.
Prod.
Rep.
on August 8, 2022
.

　　The research team first summarized the biological classification of different species of mollusks reported in the past decade and found that they can be traced back to five subclasses (Autobranchia, Caenogastropoda, Heterobranchia, Patellogastropoda and Vetigastropoda)
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The global distribution of mollusks studied in the last decade was then aggregated according to where each mollusk was collected
.
Next, the researchers classified more than 300 secondary metabolites from mollusks according to their structural types, including 33 peptides, 38 alkaloids, 192 terpenes, 54 polyketides, 20 steroids and 20 other compounds.
, and details the probable origin (food chain relationship with molluscs), structural identification, and reported biological activity of each compound
.
Among them, peptide compounds showed significant cytotoxicity and neuromodulation, and some alkaloids and macrocyclic polyketones showed important cytotoxicity.
These results provide an important reference for finding drug lead compounds from the ocean
.

　　The researchers also focused on the ecological significance of each type of compound from the perspective of the structure of different types of compounds
.
Among them, most compounds can be used as markers of the "predator-prey" chemical ecological relationship between mollusks and their food sources (such as algae, sponges, corals, etc.
), and a few compounds can be used as symbiotic/parasitic between mollusks and bacteria Relationship sign
.
Interestingly, some polyketone molecules with a new skeleton of γ-pyrones were biosynthesized after ingesting the chloroplasts of seaweeds by Cystoglossus molluscs, a phenomenon also known as "stealing food".
body"
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The study of chemical ecology also provides important clues for finding molecular types with pharmacological activity from mollusks more quickly, which has become an important breakthrough in the research of marine natural medicines, and provides a new idea for multi-dimensionally revealing the druggability of natural products
.

　　Researcher Guo Yuewei of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and researcher Li Xuwen, a member of the research group, are the corresponding authors of the study, and Chen Zihui (supervisor Guo Yuewei), a doctoral student of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, is the first author of the paper
.
This work was funded by the major projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Excellent Youth Project, the Young Scientist Project of the National Key R&D Program, and the State Key Laboratory of New Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences
.

　　Full text link: https://pubs.
rsc.
org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/np/d2np00021k

team introduction:

　　The Guo Yuewei research group of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica was established in 2000.
It has long been committed to the chemistry, chemical ecology and druggability research of biologically active substances in China's marine animals and plants, and has achieved a series of research results
.
Top/first-class publications in the field of chemistry such as Chem.
Rev.
(2012, 2015); Nat.
Prod.
Rep.
(2010, 2020, 2022), Curr.
Med.
Chem .
, APS (2011, 2022), APSB and Angew.
Chem.
Int.
Ed.
(2020, 2021) and other journals have been invited to publish a number of reviews and research papers, summarizing and reporting the important academic achievements of the research group and insights into the development prospects and trends in domestic and foreign fields and outlook
.

(Contributed by: Guo Yuewei's research group)