Secrets of the deep: Algae’s ability to treat inflammation reveals new wave of marine microbe solutions
Marine ecosystems are home to a staggering number of microbes. Each litre of fresh and seawater potentially contains a treasure trove of future applications from treating inflammatory diseases to improving the green credentials of aquaculture and plastic recycling. But scaling up solutions sustainably remains a challenge.
Chronic inflammatory diseases have been cited as one of the main causes of death worldwide, with more than 50% of all lives lost attributed to inflammation such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
“Almost every disease that you can imagine today is associated with inflammation,” said Dr Dorit Avni, an immunologist from the MIGAL Galilee Research Institute in Israel.
Dr Avni is studying marine organisms for their untapped potential to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which affects about 6.8 million people worldwide. This research is part of the EU-funded Algae4IBD project, which she also coordinates.
“It’s like having an endless treasure box because there’s an unlimited reservoir of new compounds, or even known compounds, that can act as anti-inflammatory IBD treatment,” she said.
Dr Avni’s research explores different micro- and macro-algae because of their potential to inhibit small proteins called cytokines, that may otherwise cause inflammation and contribute to an imbalanced digestive system and diseases like Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis.
“By using extracts from microalgae, or from seaweeds, we saw an inhibitory effect of 100%, meaning that the immune cells are not releasing any pro-inflammatory cytokines,” she said, adding that certain algae with these properties can “block” inflammation before it damages the body.
Alagae4IBD is examining 150 different species with eight variations already revealing early promise to treat IBD. There are now plans to test some of these algae’s anti-inflammatory properties in mice models, which will pave the way for human clinical trials in the future.
Dr Avni hopes her research, together with Algae4IBD’s partners, will eventually result in more effective drug treatments for those suffering from inflammatory diseases, such as colitis and Crohn’s disease. It could also lead to a range of functional ‘smart’ foods packed with similar health-promoting properties for IBD, like bread, yoghurt, cereals and even gummy bears.
“My hope is that Algae4IBD will help patients with IBD,” she said. “If not a cure, then the option to live a normal life as much as possible.”
Tip of the iceberg
Marine microbes’ ability to treat IBD is just scratching the surface of emerging opportunities . However it can be difficult to know where to start with each litre of sea water containing anywhere between 1 to 10 billion different organisms like phytoplankton, protists, bacteria and viruses.
This vast collection of life is also known as the ‘microbiome’ and a new research project called BlueRemediomics is hoping to use data to pinpoint the most promising microbes and fast track their untapped potential. Rob Finn from EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute is the project’s coordinator and explains that many existing microbiome data sets already contain critical information for new biobased solutions, from better plastic recycling to new antimicrobial medicines.
“In total, we sit on a database of about three billion proteins,” Rob said, adding that this, along with data on other microbes, comes from samples taken from oceans across the world, which the project processes in a uniform way to enable better identification of encouraging leads.
Afterwards the project’s academic and industrial partners can access for specific purposes. Rob and his team then provide targeted data sets with tailored information, such as potential functions of a microbe along with the best temperature or pH levels for testing.
Rob explains that this helps fast track the most promising microbes, with several already identified organisms being explored for a range of solutions, such as more sustainable aquaculture. Microbes are being investigated to improve yields in farmed salmon, such as those that offer antimicrobic potential to prevent diseases within the farms.
“There’s been talk in the salmon industry that the market could grow by at least 50%,” said Rob, adding that their enhanced data can help it do so more sustainably.
Bringing the microbiome to the masses
Effectively and efficiently identifying promising microbes is one part of scaling up game-changing solutions, but ensuring there is a sustainable supply of a commercially-viable properties is another one entirely – whether it is a compound, carbohydrate, polymer or protein.
According to Professor Aurelio Hidalgo, a molecular biologist from the University of Madrid in Spain, one reason for this is due to most marine microbes not being culturable, meaning it is difficult to retrieve and grow the desired microbes at the needed scale.
“There are two ways to study what you cannot culture,” Prof. Hidalgo said, explaining that these are sequence-based metagenomics, the study of all DNA and RNA sequences in a marine sample, or “studying every function at once”, which is known as function-based metagenomics.
Prof. Hidalgo is also the coordinator of BlueTools which is a project developing a range of approaches to harness the potential of marine microbiomes using minimal volumes harvested from the sea. This minimises the impact on marine ecosystems and preserves biodiversity. One way it does this is through a ‘bioinformatic pipeline,’ which uses computational, mathematical, and statistical tools to collect, organise, and analyse large and complex genetic sequencing data of harvested microbes.
“What you get is a stretch of DNA that encodes an interesting protein or enzyme that has an interesting function or an industrially relevant function,” he said, adding that after this process they can analyse the code in more detail to reveal the most sustainable pathways for a property to go mainstream.
Scaling-up production of a microbe’s promising properties often requires timely and costly industrial processes, but Bluetools’ approach can also help researchers and businesses focus on commercially-viable properties, reducing both market risk and the need for large-scale and indiscriminate harvesting of marine microorganisms for ongoing tests.
According to Prof. Hidalgo, limiting environmental impact is at the heart of its research and why other areas of the project will examine life cycle analyses of commercialising promising microbial products, including how to make a process less water and energy intensive.
“We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past and overexploit our natural resources,” said Prof. Hidalgo, adding that they have identified early candidates that they hope can bring marine microbes’ benefits to the market quickly. “Our target is doing this research more sustainably, so from a smaller amount of samples, but also doing it faster.”
By Steve Gillman