Research Projects

Marine ecosystems are incredibly diverse and dynamic, hosting organisms that produce unique chemical compounds. Among these, marine actinomycetes have garnered significant attention due to their exceptional metabolic and physiological capabilities. They possess the potential to generate compounds with antitumor properties and other pharmacological benefits, often absent in terrestrial microorganisms. The major challenge associated with natural product is that, rediscovery of known compounds. To overcome this, mass spectroscopy based de-replication has been emerged. The new and emerging tool has not been used in any of the Indian natural product research. India has not yet fully explored the field of microbial chemistry, leaving it largely untapped. This work envisages isolation and purification of metabolites from the marine mangrove microbial isolates (mainly actinomycetes) of which are already present at the institutional microbial repositories mainly (at marine biology department, CUSAT) isolated from mangrove sediments as well as new isolates which will be discovering during the proposed project period and their biological and chemical characterization which also include modern de-replication strategies to discover novel compounds. The repository maintained at CUSAT will be available for the Principle investigator. Currently, the Principal investigator is working on the isolation, characterization and synthesis of terruesinone and its analogues, a marine natural product which was isolated from the marine microbial repository of the department of Marine Biology (Preliminary work associated with the current proposal). This preliminary work, directly associated with the current proposal, serves to validate the authenticity and feasibility of the stated objectives. Once the lead molecule is identified from the microbial source, efforts will be made to scale up the production of lead molecules by mass production of microbial cultures. The lead molecules will be structurally functionalized to more potent analogues and efforts will also be made for their easy and feasible synthesis.