Phytoplankton have a high potential for CO₂ capture and conversion. Besides being a vital food source at the base of oceanic and freshwater food webs, microalgae provide a critical platform for producing chemicals and consumer products. Enhanced nutrient levels, elevated CO₂, and rising temperatures increase the frequency of algal blooms, which often have negative effects such as fish mortalities, loss of flora and fauna, and the production of algal toxins. Harmful algal blooms (HABs) produce toxins that pose major challenges to water quality, ecosystem function, human health, tourism, and the food web. These toxins have complex chemical structures and possess a wide range of biological properties with potential applications as new therapeutics. This review presents a balanced and comprehensive assessment of the roles of algal blooms in generating fixed carbon for the food chain, sequestering carbon, and their unique secondary metabolites. The structural complexity of these metabolites has had an unprecedented impact on structure elucidation technologies and total synthesis, which are highlighted throughout this review. In addition, the influence of biogeochemical environmental perturbations on algal blooms and their influence on biospheric environments is discussed. Lastly, we summarize work on management strategies and technologies for the control and treatment of HABs.

Petrochemicals currently represent the predominant global source of energy and consumer products, including the starting materials used in the platform chemical, plastic polymer, and pharmaceutical industries. However, in recent years, the world’s approaches have shifted towards green chemistry and bio-based chemical production in an effort to reduce CO₂ emissions and mitigate climate change. Over the past few decades, researchers have discovered that marine metabolites, primarily sourced from invertebrates, can be utilized to create sustainable and renewable chemicals. This review highlights the significance of advancing marine microorganism-based biotechnology and biochemistry in developing effective conversion systems to enhance the biological production of key platform chemicals, including those utilized as biomaterials and for energy. A background in marine metabolite biochemistry lays the groundwork for potential strategies to mitigate dependence on petroleum for consumer products. This is followed by a discussion of petroleum product replacement technologies, green chemistry alternatives, and CO₂ mitigation efforts for the production of sustainable and renewable key platform chemicals.

The urgent need for new classes of orally available, safe, and effective antivirals─covering a breadth of emerging viruses─is evidenced by the loss of life and economic challenges created by the HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 pandemics. As frontline interventions, small-molecule antivirals can be deployed prophylactically or postinfection to control the initial spread of outbreaks by reducing transmissibility and symptom severity. Natural products have an impressive track record of success as prototypic antivirals and continue to provide new drugs through synthesis, medicinal chemistry, and optimization decades after discovery. Here, we demonstrate an approach using computational analysis typically used for rational drug design to identify and develop natural product-inspired antivirals. This was done with the goal of identifying natural product prototypes to aid the effort of progressing toward safe, effective, and affordable broad-spectrum inhibitors of Betacoronavirus replication by targeting the highly conserved RNA 2'-O-methyltransferase (2'-O-MTase). Machaeriols RS-1 (7) and RS-2 (8) were identified using a previously outlined informatics approach to first screen for natural product prototypes, followed by in silico-guided synthesis. Both molecules are based on a rare natural product group. The machaeriols (3-6), isolated from the genus Machaerium, endemic to Amazonia, inhibited the SARS-CoV-2 2'-O-MTase more potently than the positive control, Sinefungin (2), and in silico modeling suggests distinct molecular interactions. This report highlights the potential of computationally driven screening to leverage natural product libraries and improve the efficiency of isolation or synthetic analog development.