Discovery of biomolecules from South African marine sponge symbionts through Metagenomic studies

Abstract

Marine sponges are known to harbour diverse microorganisms which have been proposed to be involved in the synthesis of most of the natural compounds derived from sponges. However, only about 1% of these microorganisms can currently be identified through culturebased approaches, limiting the discovery of novel natural compounds. To overcome this limitation, a metagenomics approach has been introduced for the discovery of natural compounds from symbiotic bacterial metagenomic DNA.