Three new alkaloids (1, 4 and 8), together with nine known analogues (2, 3, 5–7, and 9–12), were isolated from the marine-derived fungus Penicillium expansum Y32. Their structures including the absolute configurations were elucidated by spectroscopic and Mosher’s and Marfey’s methods, along with quantum electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculations. Each of the compounds was evaluated for cardiovascular effects in a live zebrafish model. All of the compounds showed a significant mitigative effect on bradycardia caused by astemizole (ASM) in the heart rate experiments. Compounds 4–6 and 8–12 exhibited potent vasculogenetic activity in vasculogenesis experiments. This is the first study to report that these types of compounds show cardiovascular effects in zebrafish. The results suggest that these compounds could be promising candidates for cardiovascular disease lead compounds.

Chemical investigation of secondary metabolites from the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus austroafricanus Y32-2 resulted in the isolation of two new prenylated indole alkaloid homodimers, di-6-hydroxydeoxybrevianamide E (1) and dinotoamide J (2), one new pteridine alkaloid asperpteridinate A (3), with eleven known compounds (4–14). Their structures were elucidated by various spectroscopic methods including HRESIMS and NMR, while their absolute configurations were determined by ECD calculations. Each compound was evaluated for pro-angiogenic, anti-inflammatory effects in zebrafish models and cytotoxicity for HepG2 human liver carcinoma cells. As a result, compounds 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 exhibited pro-angiogenic activity in a PTK787-induced vascular injury zebrafish model in a dose-dependent manner, compounds 7, 8, 10, 11 displayed anti-inflammatory activity in a CuSO₄-induced zebrafish inflammation model, and compound 6 showed significant cytotoxicity against HepG2 cells with an IC₅₀ value of 30 µg/mL.

Studies about the composition and diversity of microbial community in the Rare Earth Elements-rich muds are limited. In this research, we conducted a characterization for the composition and diversity of bacterial and archaeal communities from rare earth elements-rich gravity core sediment at approximately 4800 meters deep in the Indian Ocean by Illumina high-throughput sequencing targeting 16S rRNA genes. The results showed that the most abundant bacteria were Proteobacteria, followed by Firmicutes and Actinobacteria. Amongst Proteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria are present in all sections of this sediment core accounted for a particularly large proportion of bacterial sequences. Candidatus Nitrosopumilus, with a higher relative abundance in our samples, belongs to Thaumarchaeota. This is the first report on the composition and diversity of rare earth elements-rich muds microbial communities in the Indian Ocean deep sea.

The term “omics” refers to the comprehensive analysis of a specific biological system. With the development of omics, a number of omics subdisciplines have emerged, which play an important role in system biology. As a subdiscipline of omics, metabolomics provides a comprehensive analysis of the metabolome and has been widely applied to various fields of biology. In this paper, we introduce the concept, approaches, applications, and promising prospects of metabolomics.