Microdebris in Echinodea Tripneustes gratilla at Spermonde Archipelago, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Microdebris contamination of marine organism has become a major concern. As a detritivore, Tripneustes gratilla also has the opportunity to be contaminated. This study aims to determine microdebris contamination in T. gratilla, including the form and size of the microdebris. This research was conducted at three islands, i.e. Barrang Lompo, Badi, and Kondong Bali. Ten individuals were collected from each island. The digestive tract of spesies was taken, then H2O2 was added to dissolve the organic matter. Flotation was carried out by adding NaCl. Microdebris was observed using stereo microscope, and selected particle then was analysed by FT-IR Microscope. The abundance of microdebris in T. gratilla was ranged from 3.4 to 14.8 particles/individual. Tripneustes gratilla from Badi Island showed the highest levels, contained 14.8 particles/individual. Fiber and fragment were found in all the samples. Fiber was the most common microdebris and consisted of more than half of the total microdebris in each island, except Barrang Lompo. The most common size of microdebris ranged 0.05-1mm, accounted for 36% of the total microdebris. The particle observed by FT-IR Microscope was identified as cotton. Our results suggest that microdebris pollution have contaminated T. gratilla in the Spermonde archipelago.

Isolation and Structural Elucidation of Secondary Metabolites from New Zealand Marine Sponge Aaptos confertus

<p>This study reports on the spectroscopy-guided isolation and structural elucidation of secondary metabolites from the New Zealand marine sponge Aaptos confertus. An extraction of the sponge material, followed by several purification steps, led to the isolation of potential new compounds CJP02 20A, CJP02 20C and CJP02 04CB, a known 2,5-diketopiperzine cyclo(L-Phe-L-Pro), and a previously reported 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol. Corrections to the ¹H NMR data reported for 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol were also recorded. The relationship between the oceanic climate where a marine organism habituates and its production of secondary metabolites is discussed. The isolation of a diverse range of compounds, either novel or new to the genus, suggests that organisms originating in temperate climates are similar in value to those from tropical climates, where higher rates of predation (and therefore, selective pressure) are thought to produce superior diversity in their secondary metabolic distribution. In addition to the new compounds isolated, the diketopiperazine described is the first reported molecule of that class from the genus Aaptos. The significance of the isolated compounds is discussed, in the context of drug discovery and development. The potential of the branched-chain mono-glycerol ether 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol as a lipid biomarker for the genus Aaptos was examined, as this compound has only been reported from species of that genera. In addition, it’s potential as an immunomodulatory drug is discussed, including the significance of the ether linkage in contrast to the more common ester linkage. The isolation of the 2,5-diketopiperazine cyclo(L-Phe-L-Pro) new to the genus was shown to support the potential in diversity of climate and geographical distribution. This class of molecule is generated through the shikimate biosynthetic pathway; a metabolic route used by bacteria, fungi and algae. A proposed symbiotic relationship between the sponge Aaptos confertus and a proximal bacteria, fungi or algae exemplifies the value of New Zealand’s diverse and unique marine organisms.</p>

Isolation and Structural Elucidation of Secondary Metabolites from New Zealand Marine Sponge Aaptos confertus

<p>This study reports on the spectroscopy-guided isolation and structural elucidation of secondary metabolites from the New Zealand marine sponge Aaptos confertus. An extraction of the sponge material, followed by several purification steps, led to the isolation of potential new compounds CJP02 20A, CJP02 20C and CJP02 04CB, a known 2,5-diketopiperzine cyclo(L-Phe-L-Pro), and a previously reported 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol. Corrections to the ¹H NMR data reported for 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol were also recorded. The relationship between the oceanic climate where a marine organism habituates and its production of secondary metabolites is discussed. The isolation of a diverse range of compounds, either novel or new to the genus, suggests that organisms originating in temperate climates are similar in value to those from tropical climates, where higher rates of predation (and therefore, selective pressure) are thought to produce superior diversity in their secondary metabolic distribution. In addition to the new compounds isolated, the diketopiperazine described is the first reported molecule of that class from the genus Aaptos. The significance of the isolated compounds is discussed, in the context of drug discovery and development. The potential of the branched-chain mono-glycerol ether 3-((13-methylhexadecyl)oxy)propane-1,2-diol as a lipid biomarker for the genus Aaptos was examined, as this compound has only been reported from species of that genera. In addition, it’s potential as an immunomodulatory drug is discussed, including the significance of the ether linkage in contrast to the more common ester linkage. The isolation of the 2,5-diketopiperazine cyclo(L-Phe-L-Pro) new to the genus was shown to support the potential in diversity of climate and geographical distribution. This class of molecule is generated through the shikimate biosynthetic pathway; a metabolic route used by bacteria, fungi and algae. A proposed symbiotic relationship between the sponge Aaptos confertus and a proximal bacteria, fungi or algae exemplifies the value of New Zealand’s diverse and unique marine organisms.</p>

A Deep Learning-Based Embedding Framework for Object Detection and Recognition in Underwater Marine Organisms

The detection of marine organisms is an important part of the intelligent strategy in marine ranch, which requires an underwater robot to detect the marine organism quickly and accurately in the complex ocean environment. Based on the latest deep learning arithmetic, this paper put forward to find the marine organism in a picture or video to construct a real-time objective invention system for marine organisms. The neural network arithmetic： YOLOv4 was employed to extract the deep features of marine organisms, implementing the accurate detection and size detection of different fish can use arithmetic for evaluation in fisheries. Furthermore, improving the architecture of the backbone and the neck connection is called YOLOv4-embedding. As a result, compared with other object detection arithmetic, YOLOv4-embedding object detection arithmetic was better at detection accuracy--higher detection confidence and higher detection ratio than other one-stage object detection arithmetic, EfficientDet-D3 example. The consequence demonstrates that the suggested instrument could implement the rapid invention of different varieties in marine organisms. Compared to the YOLOv4, the mAP 75 of the YOLOv4-embedding achieves an improvement of 2.92% for the marine organism dataset at a rapid rate of ~51 FPS on RTX 3090, 60.8% AP 50 for the MS COCO dataset.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAHs) compound in sea-water of Cimandiri river estuary, Pelabuhan Ratu

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAHs) is a polycyclic aromatic organic compound that is toxic to humans and aquatic organisms. This research aims to determine the level of pollution of PAHs compounds in seawater at the estuary of Cimandiri River, Pelabuhan Ratu. This research was conducted in April 2017 by survey method. Seawater samples were taken using a water sampler at 15 research stations. The levels and types of PAHs compounds were determined using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), and PAHs sources with individual ratios diagnose. The results showed that seawater in the Cimandiri River Estuary still relatively low from contamination of PAH compounds. The type of PAH in seawater at the estuary of the Cimandiri River is dominated by low molecular weight naphthalene compound. PAH contained in seawater at the estuary of the Cimandiri River possibly comes from various sources, likely oil spills, burning petroleum, and combustion of organic compounds. PAH content in seawater of Cimandiri River estuary relatively small and still within the criteria for marine organism life state by The State Ministry Office for Life Environment.

A Marine Organism Detection Framework Based on the Joint Optimization of Image Enhancement and Object Detection

Underwater vision-based detection plays an increasingly important role in underwater security, ocean exploration and other fields. Due to the absorption and scattering effects of water on light, as well as the movement of the carrier, underwater images generally have problems such as noise pollution, color cast and motion blur, which seriously affect the performance of underwater vision-based detection. To address these problems, this study proposes an end-to-end marine organism detection framework that can jointly optimize the image enhancement and object detection. The framework uses a two-stage detection network with dynamic intersection over union (IoU) threshold as the backbone and adds an underwater image enhancement module (UIEM) composed of denoising, color correction and deblurring sub-modules to greatly improve the framework’s ability to deal with severely degraded underwater images. Meanwhile, a self-built dataset is introduced to pre-train the UIEM, so that the training of the entire framework can be performed end-to-end. The experimental results show that compared with the existing end-to-end models applied to marine organism detection, the detection precision of the proposed framework can improve by at least 6%, and the detection speed has not been significantly reduced, so that it can complete the high-precision real-time detection of marine organisms.

Characterization of Marine Organism Extracellular Matrix-Anchored Extracellular Vesicles and Their Biological Effect on the Alleviation of Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines

Representative marine materials such as biopolymers and bioceramics contain bioactive properties and are applied in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. The marine organism-derived extracellular matrix (ECM), which consists of structural and functional molecules, has been studied as a biomaterial. It has been used to reconstruct tissues and improve biological functions. However, research on marine-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) among marine functional materials is limited. Recent studies on marine-derived EVs were limited to eco-system studies using bacteria-released EVs. We aimed to expand the range of representative marine organisms such as fish, crustaceans, and echinoderms; establish the extraction process; and study the bioactivity capability of marine EVs. Results confirmed that marine organism ECM-anchored EVs (mEVs) have a similar morphology and cargos to those of EVs in land animals. To investigate physiological effects, lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-infected macrophages were treated with EVs derived from sea cucumber, fish, and shrimp. A comparison of the expression levels of inflammatory cytokine genes revealed that all types of mEVs alleviated pro-inflammatory cytokines, although to different degrees. Among them, the sea cucumber-derived EVs showed the strongest suppression ability. This study showed that research on EVs derived from various types of marine animals can lead to the development of high value-added therapeutics from discarded marine wastes.

Whole genome resequencing reveals signatures of rapid selection in a virus affected commercial fishery

Infectious diseases are recognised as one of the greatest global threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Consequently, there is a growing urgency to understand the speed at which adaptive phenotypes can evolve and spread in natural populations to inform future management. Here we provide evidence of rapid genomic changes in wild Australian blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra) following a major population crash associated with an infectious disease. A genome wide association study on H. rubra was conducted using pooled whole genome re-sequencing data from commercial fishing stocks varying in historical exposure to haliotid herpesvirus-1 (HaHV-1). Approximately 25,000 SNP loci associated with virus exposure were identified, many of which mapped to genes known to contribute to HaHV-1 immunity in the New Zealand pāua (H. iris) and herpesvirus response pathways in haliotids and other animal systems. These findings indicate genetic changes across a single generation in H. rubra fishing stocks decimated by HaHV-1, with stock recovery determined by rapid evolutionary changes leading to virus resistance. This is a novel example of rapid adaptation in natural populations of a non-model marine organism, highlighting the pace at which selection can potentially act to counter disease in wildlife communities.

Research Progress in Anti-Inflammatory Bioactive Substances Derived from Marine Microorganisms, Sponges, Algae, and Corals

Inflammation is the body’s defense reaction in response to stimulations and is the basis of various physiological and pathological processes. However, chronic inflammation is undesirable and closely related to the occurrence and development of diseases. The ocean gives birth to unique and diverse bioactive substances, which have gained special attention and been a focus for anti-inflammatory drug development. So far, numerous promising bioactive substances have been obtained from various marine organisms such as marine bacteria and fungi, sponges, algae, and coral. This review covers 71 bioactive substances described during 2015–2020, including the structures (65 of which), species sources, evaluation models and anti-inflammatory activities of these substances. This review aims to provide some reference for the research progress of marine-organism-derived anti-inflammatory metabolites and give more research impetus for their conversion to novel anti-inflammatory drugs.

Nematostella vectensis, an Emerging Model for Deciphering the Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Whole-Body Regeneration

The capacity to regenerate lost or injured body parts is a widespread feature within metazoans and has intrigued scientists for centuries. One of the most extreme types of regeneration is the so-called whole body regenerative capacity, which enables regeneration of fully functional organisms from isolated body parts. While not exclusive to this habitat, whole body regeneration is widespread in aquatic/marine invertebrates. Over the past decade, new whole-body research models have emerged that complement the historical models Hydra and planarians. Among these, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has attracted increasing interest in regard to deciphering the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the whole-body regeneration process. This manuscript will present an overview of the biological features of this anthozoan cnidarian as well as the available tools and resources that have been developed by the scientific community studying Nematostella. I will further review our current understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying whole-body regeneration in this marine organism, with emphasis on how comparing embryonic development and regeneration in the same organism provides insight into regeneration specific elements.