An online resource for marine fungi

Index Fungorum,Species Fungorum and MycoBank are the key fungal nomenclature and taxonomic databases that can be sourced to find taxonomic details concerning fungi,while DNA sequence data can be sourced from the NCBI,EBI and UNITE databases.Nomenclature and ecological data on freshwater fungi can be accessed on http://fungi.life.illinois.edu/,while http://www.marinespecies.org/provides a comprehensive list of names of marine organisms,including information on their synonymy.Previous websites however have little information on marine fungi and their ecology,beside articles that deal with marine fungi,especially those published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may not be accessible to those working in third world countries.To address this problem,a new website www.marinefungi.org was set up and is introduced in this paper.This website provides a search facility to genera of marine fungi,full species descriptions,key to species and illustrations,an up to date classification of all recorded marine fungi which includes all fungal groups(Ascomycota,Basidiomycota,Blastocladiomycota,Chytridiomycota,Mucoromycota and fungus-like organisms e.g.Thraustochytriales),and listing recent publications.Currently,1257 species are listed in the marine fungi website(www.marinefungi.org),in 539 genera,74 orders,168 families,20 classes and five phyla,with new taxa continuing to be described.The website has curators with specialist mycological expertise who help to provide update data on the classification of marine fungi.This article also reviews knowledge of marine fungi covering a wide range of topics:their higher classification,ecology and world distribution,role in energy transfer in the oceans,origin and new chemical structures.An updated classification of marine fungi is also included.We would like to invite all mycologists to contribute to this innovative website.

Genomic scanning enabling discovery of a new antibacterial bicyclic carbamate-containing alkaloid

Non-ribosomal peptides are a group of structurally diverse natural products with various important therapeutic and agrochemical applications.Bacterial pyrrolizidine alkaloids(PAs),containing a scaffold of two fused five-membered ring system with a nitrogen atom at the bridgehead,have been found to originate from a multidomain non-ribosomal peptide synthetase to generate indolizidine intermediates,followed by multistep oxidation,catalysed by single Bayer-Villiger(BV)enzymes,to yield PA scaffolds.Although bacterial PAs are rare in natural product inventory,bioinformatics analysis suggested that the biosynthetic gene clusters(BGCs)that are likely to be responsible for the production of PA-like metabolites are widely distributed in bacterial genomes.However,most of the strains containing PA-like BGCs are not deposited in the public domain,therefore preventing further assessment of the chemical spaces of this group of bioactive metabolites.Here,we report a genomic scanning strategy to assess the potential of PA metabolites production in our culture collection without prior knowledge of genome information.Among the strains tested,we found fifteen contain the key BV enzymes that are likely to be involved in the last step of PA ring formation.Subsequently one-strain-many-compound(OSMAC)method,supported by a combination of HR-MS,NMR,SMART 2.0 technology,and GNPS analysis,allowed identification and characterization of a new[5+7]heterobicyclic carbamate,legoncarbamate,together with five known PAs,bohemamine derivatives,from Streptomyces sp.CT37,a Ghanaian soil isolate.The absolute stereochemistry of legoncarbamate was determined by comparison of measured and calculated ECD spectra.Legoncarbamate displays antibacterial activity against E.coli ATCC 25922 with an MIC value of 3.1μg/mL.Finally,a biosynthetic model of legoncarbamate and other bohemamines was proposed based on the knowledge we have gained so far.