SAN DIEGO, June 14 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have determined a bacterium discovered in Bahamian mud might be a producer of natural antibiotics and anticancer products.
That discovery came when Daniel Udwary, Bradley Moore and colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of California-San Diego joined the U.S. Joint Genome Institute in successfully sequencing the genome of Salinispora tropica.
The researchers said the decoding might lead to isolating and adapting potent molecules the marine organism naturally employs for chemical defense, scavenging for nutrients and communication.
Salinispora was discovered in 1991 in shallow ocean sediment off the Bahamas. The bacterium produces compounds that have shown promising signs for treating cancers. Its product, "salinosporamide A," is in human clinical trials for treating multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in bone marrow, as well as solid tumors.
"By sequencing Salinispora tropica we are now able to look in greater detail at this organism and potentially pull out some of the other compounds from the gene clusters that may make highly potent anticancer agents," said Moore.
The study appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
