Malaspina´s Marine Fungi Kingdom Rocks Human Health

Malaspina Expedition 2010 Across World Oceans 

Once again the Malaspina Expedition breaks news with the discovery of thousands of new species. The discovery of these new species is of value for numerous sectors but given the nature of species discovered attention draws upon the medical and pharmaceutical sector working on diseases with no found cure such as cancer. Malaspina proved again that one ship can make a difference.  

The Spanish National Research Council CSIC communicated on October 13 that the results of Malaspina project revealed thousands of new species, with a large variability between oceans.

Of every thousands of studied microorganisms approximately 50% are completely new to science and are new species. 

CSIC astonished the Oceanographic Community -once again, by revealing a wide range of newly discovered marine fungi. Marine Fungi until today were registered to live in ocean-coast-influenced basins or attached to marine vertebrates and invertebrates but now Malaspina scientists say that marine fungi are living in the depths of the ocean and are in fact “highly present”. The new papers also revealed an abundant new type of symbiotic organisms -organisms which live side by side, such as the algae which live “inside” corals. 

   

The Malaspina Expedition set course throughout all ocean basins in 2010 and took up what they described as a “sea of data and samples”. Samples taken by the expedition were so numerous that researchers still today continue to study them and new papers and results continue to detach from the expedition samples. 

Europa Press jumped all over the news and echoed the words of Researchers of the Institute of Sea Sciences ICM of the CSIC which led the study. The new Malaspina findings were published in a three-article-series in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Magazine. 

“Almost half of the bacteria and archaea that we found could represent new species,”Guillem Salazar -Doctorate researcher from ICM and main responsible for the papers told the media

Salazar explained that samples studied included deep sea samples from the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North and South Pacific and Indic Ocean. 

Genetic sequences performed revealed that 46% of the bacteria and archaea analyzed are new to science and that 59% of all eukaryotic species analyzed genetically are unknown to humankind. 

Marine Fungi until today were registered to live mostly and most abundantly in Mangrove environments -a reasonable fact given that wood environments tend to stimulate the growth of fungi. These type of marine fungi can be considered as “land evolving fungi”. The same can be said about rock-liquen marine fungi living in rock-ocean coasts or marine plant fungi such as those associated with seagrass or algae. Other known marine fungi are linked to those depending and living off vertebrates such as whales or dolphins as well as invertebrates such as the American Lobster -this type of relationship is also common in land environments. 

The Malaspina expedition assures that the wide range of new Marine Fungi discovered do not belong to this type of realm and that they are actually living in deep sea environments which are mostly populated by micro-organic creatures such as plankton, dinoflagellates, smaller bacteria and others. 

But why would the medical and pharmaceutical sector be interested in the discovery of a wide range of new species of Marine Fungi? The facts speak by themselves. 

“The importance to humanity of fungi is not really appreciated until one studies their usage in drug manufacturing,” experts explained. At the beginning of this century, 10 of the 20 most profitable medicinal products involved fungi. Fungi are also used in the current top-selling prescription medicines -such as the antibiotic amoxicillin and three anti-cholesterol drugs. Fungi not only provide cures and alleviate diseases and affections but are part of a billionaire pharmaceutical sector which synthesis fungal products. 

Fungi have also been a source of food for numerous generations, huge range of edible fungi (mushrooms) are cultivated in a multimillion dollar industry worldwide and are present in products such as soy sauce or blue cheese. Fungi have also been used in activities such as the control of pests, alcohol and beer production, and making bread. 

Responding on the revelation of discovering Marine Fungi in deep ocean waters environment Ramon Massan researcher of the ICM-CSIC and leader of the work recognized to be “surprised”. “We are working to describe these organisms and to know their ways of life. Until now it was believed that marine fungi were not abundant in the ocean,” Massan added. 

As the pharmaceutical sector becomes every day more and more interested in the ocean species investing millions in ocean research on land terrestrial Fungi continue to lead the way in the search of new cures. On September 25 News Medical reported on a Fungi Research which could lead to cheaper Anti-Cancer Drugs. The media reported on the new study conducted by Scientists of the University of Guelph which was published in Current Biology. 

Scientists say that the research is the first to show the benefits of the fungi which naturally live in yew trees. They act as “a combination bandage-immune system for the plant,” Co-author Professor Manish Raizada, Department of Plant Agriculture told the media. 

“Drug companies might one day harness beneficial fungi to pump out more taxol (element used in cancer drugs production) cheaply and easily to meet demand,” Prof. Raizada said and described the finding as a “Holy Grail” for Cancer Drug makers.

Fungi products not only serve human health but are used to keep environments in balance -sectors as agriculture turn to them for pest controls. “Fungi at Root of Plant Drugs, Can Help, or Harm, Sick Monarch Butterflies,” Eureka Alert reported on October 13 

Previously, biologists at Emory University and the University of Michigan discovered that butterflies use plant toxins as a drug to cure their offspring of parasitic infections. Now they've dug a little deeper and found that the fungi associated with the roots of milkweed plants change both the nutritional and medicinal chemistry of milkweed leaves. Proceedings of the Royal Society B published the results, which provide a more complete and complex picture of infectious disease ecology than before.

These are just two recent examples of the thousands of papers which has been conducted on the issue. Fungi are also known to produce the same elements which plants produce, elements called “the Foundation of Modern Pharmacology”. 

The Malaspina Expedition -just like the health and medical sector and the ocean exploration sector has long decades and even Centuries in the making of history. The first Malaspina Expedition took place in 1789 and concluded in 1794. In 2010 Malaspina sailed again and shocked the world just as it did back in the 1700s. Who knows what the future departs? By the year 2045 Ocean science could have played a key role in the beneficial development of human society and human health. But this really depends on what is done today... 

La Vanguardia reported from Barcelona that one of the main goals of the Malaspina expedition 2010 was to describe the overall biodiversity of microorganisms in the ocean, with special detail in the dark ocean species, from layers below 200 meters in depth. 

Silvia G. Acinas, ICM researcher involved in the three papers told the media that microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, protozoa and microscopic algae, with sizes ranging from less than one micron to a few tens of microns "are dominant in abundance, biomass and activity, and they are responsible for most of the biochemistry of the ocean, as well as the main reservoir of genetic diversity of our seas".