Rapid Screening of Polyol Polyketides from Marine Dinoflagellates

Fast tracking the screening of biotoxins from algae

28 February 2023

A method for rapidly screening biotoxins produced by algae could help speed up the discovery of useful compounds.

Single-celled algae with a pair of hair-like appendages, dinoflagellates produce large, complex molecules known as polyketides. These biotoxins make blooms of dinoflagellates toxic, but they are also promising sources of new therapeutic drugs.

However, it has been challenging to analyse polyketides since different strains of the same dinoflagellate species can produce polyketides that differ slightly in structure but have very different bioactivities.

Now, a team led by researchers from University of La Laguna has demonstrated that combining an analytic technique that employs liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry with molecular networking can fast track the screening of polyketides from dinoflagellates.

Using this approach, they screened compounds produced by a dinoflagellate species and used the results to come up with the molecular structures of nine amphidinols—compounds that can act as antifungals.

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References

1. Analytical Chemistry 94, 14205−14213 (2022). doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.2c02185