Ryan M. Young

University of Galway | NUI Galway · School of Chemistry

The extent to which any particular taxon supplies novel natural products depends on biological and evolutionary differences, and on decisions made by (or constraints on) biodiscovery scientists. The influences of different sources of variability on the biodiscovery process were examined in a study of the Cnidaria, a group recognised as an important...

Four undescribed sesquiterpenoids, crannenols A-D (1-4), have been isolated from CHCl2 and MeOH extracts of the deep-sea bamboo coral Acanella arbuscula. The corals were collected from a submarine canyon on the edge of Ireland's Porcupine Bank via a remotely operated vehicle. The structure elucidation of these (Z,E)-α-farnesene derivatives was achi...

Cold water benthic environments are a prolific source of structurally diverse molecules with a range of bioactivities against human disease. Specimens of a previously chemically unexplored soft coral, Duva florida, were collected during a deep-sea cruise that sampled marine invertebrates along the Irish continental margin in 2018. Tuaimenal A (1),...

A selection of antiviral compounds from the Drug Repurposing Hub were screened as potential inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 protein targets using CIFDock, a flexible docking method. CIFDock allows for a fully flexible active site of the protein-ligand complex and retaining of explicit water molecules throughout docking simulations. This method provid...

Cold water benthic environments are a prolific source of structurally diverse molecules with a range of bioactivity against human disease. Specimens of a previously chemically unexplored soft coral, Drifa sp., were collected during a deep-sea cruise that sampled marine invertebrates along the Irish continental margin in 2018. Tuaimenal A ( 1 ), a c...

Phylum Cnidaria has been an excellent source of natural products, with thousands of metabolites identified. Many of these have not been screened in bioassays. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of 5600 Cnidaria natural products (after excluding those known to derive from microbial symbionts), using a systematic approach based on che...

Chronic diseases characterized by bone and cartilage loss are associated with a reduced ability of progenitor cells to regenerate new tissues in an inflammatory environment. A promising strategy to treat such diseases is based on tissue repair mediated by human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), but therapeutic outcomes are hindered by the absence of...

Fungi populate deep Oceans in extreme habitats characterized by high hydrostatic pressure, low temperature and absence of sunlight. Marine fungi are potential major contributors to biogeochemical events, critical for marine communities and food web equilibrium under climate change conditions and a valuable source of novel extremozymes and small mol...

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a group of disabling infectious diseases that disproportionately affect middle- and low-income people in Africa and Latin America. Although progress has been made in controlling and/or eradicating these devastating infections, there is still an urgent need for new and accessible drugs. For several neglected tr...

p>Cold water benthic environments are a prolific source of structurally diverse molecules with a range of bioactivity against human disease. Specimens of a previously chemically unexplored soft coral, Drifa sp., were collected during a deep-sea cruise that sampled marine invertebrates along the Irish continental margin in 2018. Tuaimenal A ( 1 ), a...

Polar marine ecosystems hold the potential for bioactive compound biodiscovery, based on their untapped macro- and microorganism diversity. Characterization of polar benthic marine invertebrate-associated microbiomes is limited to few studies. This study was motivated by our interest in better understanding the microbiome structure and composition...

The ascidian, S. adareanum, from the Antarctic Peninsula near Anvers Island, is known to produce a bioactive compound, palmerolide A (PalA) that has specific activity to melanoma, a particularly invasive and metastatic form of skin cancer. The combined non-ribosomal peptide polyketide structure of PalA has similarities to microbially-produced macro...

Extensive areas of our Planet are covered by deep sea, constituting the major environment existing on Earth and a valuable reservoir of bioactive compounds. Musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis could benefit from the discovery of new drugs to induce tissue regeneration through control of stem cell fate. In the sea, coral...

Deep sea represents the vast majority of all Oceans and the predominant environment existing on Earth. Beside its unmatched dimension stands its biodiversity, only comparable to barrier reefs or rainforests (1, 2). Despite its scientific relevance the deep sea has never been thoroughly studied in the past because of the difficulty of access, but th...

Covering: Most of 2013 up to the end of 2015 This review highlights the 2013–2015 marine chemical ecology literature for benthic bacteria and cyanobacteria, macroalgae, sponges, cnidarians, molluscs, other benthic invertebrates, and fish.

One goal of the Science Foundation Ireland project “Exploiting and conserving deep-sea genetic resources” that started in September 2016 is to analyse the economic potential of deep-sea Irish waters in relation to Porifera and Cnidaria bioactive compound production. However, defining the bioactivity of natural compounds is a complex task as few nat...

Since the initial discovery of marine phyco-derived secondary metabolites in the 1950s there has been a rapid increase in the description of new algal natural products. These metabolites have multiple ecological roles as well as commercial value as potential drugs or lead compounds. With the emergence of resistance to our current arsenal of drugs a...

The Irish coastline is approximately 7500 Km long representing one of the most biodiverse and rich-species habitats in Europe. With only few studies conducted in the North East Atlantic region, Irish waters can be a great source of new and unexplored chemical diversity. Four different Osmundea sp., commonly found in intertidal zone, have been descr...

Department of Chemistry and Center for Drug Discovery and Innovation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA Historically, marine natural products from the Republic of Ireland have been greatly underrepresented in the literature despite having a coastline of over 4500 miles. Archidoris pseudoargus is a soft-bodied, slow moving Dorid nudibranch...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is utilized to attract mosquitoes and other blood-feeding arthropods to traps around the world. Commercial forms of CO2 (e.g. dry ice and compressed gas) are often unavailable or extremely expensive in developing nations, where vector surveillance is essential to make life-saving decisions. We developed and tested inexpensive a...

The deposition of eggs, also known as oviposition, by black fly species known to be vectors of onchocerciasis has been observed to be a communal behavior. This communal behavior was described as female adults aggregating and ovipositing on a substrate which resulted in producing a large mass of eggs, and it has been hypothesized to be driven in par...

The suite of pheromones that promote communal oviposition by Simulium vittatum, a North American black fly species, was identified and characterized using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, electrophysiological, and behavioral bioassays. Behavioral assays demonstrated that communal oviposition was induced by egg-derived compounds that were activ...

Over a decade ago Wright et al., proposed a putative antiplasmodial mechanism of action for marine isonitriles (1, and 3-6) and isothiocyanate (2) that involved interference in heme detoxification by Plasmodium falciparum thus inhibiting the growth of the parasite. In the current paper we describe the successful down scaling of Egan's β-hematin inh...

Entomological indicators are considered key metrics to document the interruption of transmission of Onchocerca volvulus, the etiological agent of human onchocerciasis. Human landing collection is the standard employed for collection of the vectors for this parasite. Recent studies reported the development of traps that have the potential for replac...

Prenylation is the addition of prenyl groups to peptide chains or metabolites via the condensation of geranyl- or isopentenyl-diphosphate moieties by geranyltranstransferases. Although this process is extensively studied in eukaryotes, little is known about the influence of prenylation in prokaryotic species. To explore the role of this modificatio...

As part of an ongoing study to elucidate the SAR of bisindole alkaloid inhibitors against the evolutionary conserved MRSA pyruvate kinase (PK), we present here the synthesis and biological activity of six dihalogenated analogues of the naturally occurring sponge metabolite deoxytopsentin, including the naturally occurring dibromodeoxytopsentin. The...

Onchocerciasis or river blindness is a parasitic disease caused by infection from the nematode Onchocerca volvulus. The parasite is transmitted to humans by black fly vectors of the genus Simulium. Most of the infections occur in central Africa, with significant incidence also in Central and South America. The World Health Organization (WHO) estima...

Shallow-water communities along the western Antarctic Peninsula support forests of large, mostly chemically defended macroalgae and dense assemblages of macroalgal-associated amphipods, which are thought to exist together in a community-wide mutualism. The amphipods benefit the chemically defended macrophytes by consuming epiphytic algae and in tur...

MRSA pyruvate kinase is an evolutionary conserved enzyme, responsible for catalysing the rate limiting final step in glycolysis. Sequence alignment and X-ray co-crystallography revealed amino acid sequence divergence from common human PK orthologs at the small interface, which is also the site of inhibitor binding. As part of an ongoing investigati...

Supplementary Information (PDF, 50 KB)

Plocamium cartilagineum is a common red alga on the benthos of Antarctica and can be a dominant understory species along the western Antarctic Peninsula. Algae from this region have been studied chemically, and like "P. cartilagineum" from other worldwide locations where it is common, it is rich in halogenated monoterpenes, some of which have been...

We report an improved procedure for the synthesis of phenyl glyoxal and a series of para-substituted aryl glyoxals by microwave-assisted selenium dioxide oxidation. The reaction time has been reduced from several hours to three minutes for activated aryl methyl ketone substrates and 18min for deactivated substrates, with all reactions affording qua...

A variety of 8β,13β-dihydroxypodocarpane derivatives (V) (8 examples) are synthesized starting from naturally occurring diterpene (+)-manod.

8β,13β-Dihydroxypodocarpane and eight C-13 substituted derivatives were prepared from the precursor 8bhydroxy-13-podocarpanone synthesised from the naturally occurring diterpene (+)-manool. The synthetic compounds exhibited a range of anti-plasmodial activities (IC50 1-29 μM) and only induced minimal haemolysis of erythrocytes at concentrations 50...

8β,13β-Dihydroxypodocarpane and eight C-13 substituted derivatives were prepared from the precursor 8 b hydroxy-13-podocarpanone synthesised from the naturally occurring diterpene (+)-manool. The synthetic compounds exhibited a range of anti-plasmodial activities (IC50 1–29 μM) and only induced minimal haemolysis of erythrocytes at concentrations 5...