A recent study conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego may open the door to the laboratory manufacture of rare coral chemicals known as diterpenoids, which have potential use in the treatment of inflammation and cancer.
However, because the chemicals are produced in small quantities by rare, slow-growing corals, it is both environmentally damaging and impractical to collect enough for testing or medicine development, which has prevented researchers from thoroughly studying them.
“There is a lot of excitement to study their biomedical potential because corals produce unique chemical compounds that are not seen in the terrestrial world,” said Bradley Moore, senior author of the study and a marine chemist from Scripps and UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy.
Unfortunately, obtaining an adequate amount of natural resources is extremely difficult. Now that we have the genetic blueprint to produce these molecules, we can solve the supply problem and find new substances that may help humanity.
The study discovered a group of five genes that are in charge of producing diterpenoids in several species of octocorals, a form of coral.
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Biochemists can now create octocoral chemicals in the lab and explore their potential as medications or other goods thanks to the discovery of this gene cluster.
The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and NOAA provided money for the study, which was published in Nature Chemical Biology.