Marine bacteriocins: Prospects and informatics tools

Marine environments have always been a source of great interest for research on new bioactive compounds. Among the various bioactive compounds from marine bacteria, the peptides called bacteriocins got considerable attention to replace antibiotics in the near future. Bacteriocins are generally the low molecular weight peptides ribosomally synthesized by bacteria and can kill or inhibit the growth of closely related or unrelated strains of bacteria. Both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria produce bacteriocins; the structure and mode of action differ. Bacteriocins from marine bacteria have the prospects to be used as probiotics and antibiotics in the seafood industry and in other wider applications as novel antimicrobials. The conventional time-consuming bioassay-guided process for purifying the vast majority of the bioactive compounds is currently being replaced with the advancement in molecular and computational tools. The whole microbial genome sequencing and metagenomic data are being employed and bacteriocin Biosynthetic Gene Clusters could be identified by Genome mining from the bacteriocin database BACTIBASE, BAGEL, and using bioinformatic tools like anti-SMASH, BOA, and NeuBI. Genomics and bioinformatics technologies can be extremely useful in identifying and isolating bacteriocins with significant application from marine bacteria.