Marine organisms provide appreciable source of novel bioactive compounds with pharmacological potential. There is little information in correlation with anti-cancer activities of brittle star. In the present study, anti-neoplastic efficacy of Ophiocoma erinaceus methanol extract against human cervical cancer cells was investigated.
Sea cucumbers, blind cylindrical marine invertebrates that live in the ocean intertidal beds have more than thousand species available of varying morphology and colours throughout the world. Sea cucumbers have long been exploited in traditional treatment as a source of natural medicinal compounds. Various nutritional and therapeutic values have been linked to this invertebrate. These creatures have been eaten since ancient times and purported as the most commonly consumed echinoderms. Some important biological activities of sea cucumbers including anti-hypertension, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-asthmatic, anti-bacterial and wound healing. Thus, this short review comes with the principal aim to cover the profile, taxonomy, together with nutritional and medicinal properties of sea cucumbers.
Relationships between six calcifying plankton groups and pH are explored in a highly biologically productive and data-rich area of the central North Sea using time-series datasets. The long-term trends show that abundances of foraminiferans, coccolithophores, and echinoderm larvae have risen over the last few decades while the abundances of bivalves and pteropods have declined. Despite good coverage of pH data for the study area there is uncertainty over the quality of this historical dataset; pH appears to have been declining since the mid 1990s but there was no statistical connection between the abundance of the calcifying plankton and the pH trends. If there are any effects of pH on calcifying plankton in the North Sea they appear to be masked by the combined effects of other climatic (e.g. temperature), chemical (nutrient concentrations) and biotic (predation) drivers. Certain calcified plankton have proliferated in the central North Sea, and are tolerant of changes in pH that have occurred since the 1950s but bivalve larvae and pteropods have declined. An improved monitoring programme is required as ocean acidification may be occurring at a rate that will exceed the environmental niches of numerous planktonic taxa, testing their capacities for acclimation and genetic adaptation.
A new tetrabromospirocyclohexadienylisoxazole, (+)-12-hydroxyhomoaerothionin (1), together with the known compounds (+)-aerothionin (2) and crinemodin-rhodoptilometrin bianthrone (3), were isolated from the marine crinoid Himerometra magnipinna, which had been collected in the South China Sea, Malaysia. The structure of 1 was elucidated by interpretation of 1D 1H and 13C NMR spectra and 2D 1H-1H COSY, HMQC, and HMBC spectra. This is the first report of tetrabromospirocyclohexadienylisoxazole compounds from a crinoid of Himerometra. Compounds 1-3 were evaluated for their inhibitory activity with the hyphae formation inhibition assay in Streptomyces 85E.
This study aimed to determine phylogenetic relationship between and among selected species of sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) using 16S mitochondrial ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene. Phylogenetic analyses of 37 partial sequences of 16S mitochondrial rRNA gene using three main methods namely neighbour joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP) and maximum likelihood (ML) showed the presence of five main genera of sea cucumbers: Molpadia from order Molpadiida and four genera of order Aspidochirotida namely Holothuria, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga. All of the 17 species obtained from Malaysia distributed among the main genera except within Actinopyga. Interestingly, Holothuria excellens was out of Holothuria group causing Holothuria to be paraphyletic. High bootstrap value and consistent clustering made Molpadia, Stichopus, Bohadschia and Actinopyga monophyletic. The relationship of Actinopyga with the other genera was unclarified and Stichopus was sister to Molpadia. The latter finding caused the resolution at order level unclear. The pairwise genetic distance calculated using Kimura 2-parameter model further supported and verified findings from the phylogenetic trees. Further studies with more samples and different mitochondrial DNA genes need to be done to get a better view and verification on the molecular phylogeny of sea cucumbers.