6 / 2021-10-03 17:36:17

Discovery of the neuroprotective alkaloids from the marine sponge‐derived fungus Aspergillus aculeatus XWS02F29 to NO stress

marine-derived fungi, marine natural product, neuroinflammation, alkaloids, UHPLC-HRMS

Neuroinflammation can result in common neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). As the primary immune cells of the central nervous system, microglia will be over-activated and pro-inflammatory mediator nitric oxide (NO) would excessive accumulation. Therefore, inhibition of the over-generation of NO in microglia has been shown to delay the progress of such disorders ^1-3.  Marine-derived fungi have proven to be a research hotspot for searching effective secondary metabolites due to that fungi would adapt to thrive under extreme environments ⁴. In our previous study, the fungus Aspergillus aculeatus obtained from a sponge Callyspongia sp. attracted our attention due to its resistance and survival rates under exogenous Nitric Oxide stress. In this approach, metabolomic analysis using UHPLC-HRMS based analytical techniques were applied to characterize the difference of secondary metabolites of A. aculeatus with or without NO stress. The result showed that some bis-indole alkaloids could be used as potential Q-markers to distinguish the strain under this stress from the control group. And this founding suggested indole-alkaloids from this genus would throw the light for neuroinflammation-related diseases.