Aquaculture

The marine environment has proven to be an extremely rich source of novel natural products with activities in a variety of biological assays. The field of marine natural products chemistry has enjoyed an explosion of growth over the past 40 years and currently there are marine-derived metabolites in clinical trials for cancer, analgesia, allergy and cognitive diseases. Even with this tremendous development, it is clear that chemists and pharmacologists are only beginning to scratch the surface of the biomedical potential of marine organisms. One problem with this source of new pharmaceuticals is that the supply of such compounds can be problematic. The thesis describes projects directed at fundamental biosynthetic questions regarding terpenes from marine corals. In a general sense, these projects are directed as addressing the supply issue identified above. One project examined the origin of terpene building blocks in the coral Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae. A second project focused on the characterization of terpenes from Leptogorgia minimata. Here, a new cembranoid diterpene was isolated. Experiments were also conducted to identify a microbial source of terpene biosynthesis in this system. Data strongly supported a bacterial origin of these compounds.

The pseudopterosins are a class of diterpene glycosides isolated from the Caribbean sea whip, Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae. Pseudopterosins A-D possess potent anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties (ED50 ca. 3.0 mg/kg). There is a large demand in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries for pseudopterosin derivatives and presently, the only source of these chemicals is from wild-collected gorgonians. Preliminary experiments were performed to develop a reliable, cost-effective production method of the pseudopterosins in order to avoid large-scale harvesting. We exposed the gorgonians to various forms of "stress" in an attempt to increase the amount of pseudopterosins produced. We have also evaluated the feasibility of raising Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae in an aquaculture setting by studying their growth rates in different environments. Our studies indicate that aquaculture used with some simple induction methods can allow for the commercialization of this important biochemical resource.