Specialized or secondary metabolites are small molecules of biological origin, often showing potent biological activities with applications in agriculture, engineering and medicine. Usually, the biosynthesis of these natural products is governed by sets of co-regulated and physically clustered genes known as biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). To share information about BGCs in a standardized and machine-readable way, the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster (MIBiG) data standard and repository was initiated in 2015. Since its conception, MIBiG has been regularly updated to expand data coverage and remain up to date with innovations in natural product research. Here, we describe MIBiG version 4.0, an extensive update to the data repository and the underlying data standard. In a massive community annotation effort, 267 contributors performed 8304 edits, creating 557 new entries and modifying 590 existing entries, resulting in a new total of 3059 curated entries in MIBiG. Particular attention was paid to ensuring high data quality, with automated data validation using a newly developed custom submission portal prototype, paired with a novel peer-reviewing model. MIBiG 4.0 also takes steps towards a rolling release model and a broader involvement of the scientific community. MIBiG 4.0 is accessible online at https://mibig.secondarymetabolites.org/.

Natural products are primal and have been a driver in the evolution of organic chemistry and ultimately in science. The chemical structures obtained from marine organisms are diverse, reflecting biodiversity of genes, species and ecosystems. Biodiversity is an extraordinary feature of life and provides benefits to humanity while promoting the importance of environment conservation. This review covers the literature on marine natural products (MNPs) discovered in Indonesian waters published from January 1970 to December 2017, and includes 732 original MNPs, 4 structures isolated for the first time but known to be synthetic entities, 34 structural revisions, 9 artifacts, and 4 proposed MNPs. Indonesian MNPs were found in 270 papers from 94 species, 106 genera, 64 families, 32 orders, 14 classes, 10 phyla, and 5 kingdoms. The emphasis is placed on the structures of organic molecules (original and revised), relevant biological activities, structure elucidation, chemical ecology aspects, biosynthesis, and bioorganic studies. Through the synthesis of past and future data, huge and partly undescribed biodiversity of marine tropical invertebrates and their importance for crucial societal benefits should greatly be appreciated.

Due to a rate increase in the resistance of microbial pathogens to currently used antibiotics, there is a need in society for the discovery of novel antimicrobials. Historically, fungi are a proven source for antimicrobial compounds. The main goals of this study were to investigate the fungal diversity associated with sea foam collected around the coast of Prince Edward Island and the utility of this resource for the production of antimicrobial natural products. Obtained isolates were identified using ITS and nLSU rDNA sequences, fermented on four media, extracted and fractions enriched in secondary metabolites were screened for antimicrobial activity. The majority of the isolates obtained were ascomycetes, consisting of four recognized marine taxa along with other ubiquitous genera and many ‘unknown’ isolates that could not be identified to the species level using rDNA gene sequences. Secondary metabolite isolation efforts lead to the purification of the metabolites epolones A and B, pycnidione and coniothyrione from a strain of Neosetophoma samarorum; brefeldin A, leptosin J and the metabolite TMC-264 from an unknown fungus (probably representative of an Edenia sp.); and 1-hydroxy-6-methyl-8-hydroxymethylxanthone, chrysophanol and chrysophanol bianthrone from a Phaeospheria spartinae isolate. The biological activity of each of these metabolites was assessed against a panel of microbial pathogens as well as several cell lines.

Two sesterterpenes, deoxymanoalide (1) and deoxysecomanoalide (2), were isolated from the nudibranch Chromodoris willani collected in Okinawa and their structures determined on the basis of spectroscopic data and chemical conversions. The mollusk feeds on a sponge containing manoalide (3) and secomanoalide (4) and is likely to biotransform them into 1 and 2. Both 1 and 2 showed moderate antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis and inhibited snake venom phospholipase A2 at 0.2 to 0.5 μM.