Marine sponge-associated microbes: a source of biologically active metabolites

Since the first exploration of the marine environment for natural compounds in 1945 by Werner Bergmann, marine sponges have been considered the most prolific and important source of new bioactive compounds in the marine environment. Because of their immense production of new compounds, sponges are considered a chemical factory in the marine environment and a gold mine to chemists. Thus, marine sponges have gained much attention in various scientific disciplines (Bergmann and Feeney 1951; Baby and Sujatha 2010). The pioneering work of Werner Bergmann has led to the development of chemical derivatives Ara-A (vidarabine) and Ara-C (cytarabine), two nucleosides with significant anticancer and antiviral activity that have been approved for clinical use as the first marine-derived natural products. Since then, marine sponges have been a good candidate for pharmaceutically active metabolites and thousands of research articles have been published to reveal their potential (Molinski et al. 2009; Mayer et al. 2010)