Bacterial pigments from marine environment
Nature produces many pigments from a variety of resources, including
plants animals and microorganisms. These pigments have been used as a
potential material to replace synthetic dyes nowadays. Photo-pigments
produced by microorganisms are preferred than the plant producing
pigments because of their stability and feasibility of culturing. Among
microbes, bacteria have tremendous potential for producing a variety of
biproducts in which pigments are the major constituents (Abdulkadir,
2017). Marine bacteria are an important source of natural product
discovery with a success rate up to four times higher than other
naturally derived chemicals due to their extensive biodiversity and
genetic capacity, which can contribute to the synthesis of novel
bioactive pigments (C. Ramesh et al., 2019). The complicated
”quorum sensing” process in the marine environment which mediates the
production of these pigments, it can also produce when exposed to
various stress situations in natural environment conditions. The reason
for their selection is that marine microbial pigments have the ability
to survive in extremely acidic or alkaline environments (pH4,
> 9), extreme temperatures (2–15 °C and 60–110 °C) and
insufficient nutrient availability. Halophilic archaea are widely
distributed in the marine ecosystem. In addition to their capacity to
withstand osmolytes (such as 2-sulfo-trehalose) or high ionic strength,
pigmented compounds from marine archaea are also classified due to their
ability to tolerate hyper-saline and basic pH environments. These
pigments can be extensively used in a variety of bio-medical and
bio-industrial sectors, including the textile, food, pharmaceutical, and
cosmetic industries (e.g., fluorescence-based indicator) (Nawaz et al.,
2021). Marine bacterial pigments are a current area of research because
of their anti-microbial, anti-cancer, photoprotective, anti-parasitic
and immunosuppressive characteristics. Marine bacteria synthesise a
number of pigments, including carotene, melanin, phenazine, pyrrole,
violacein, and quinones (Velmurugan et al., 2020) ( Fig 3. Types of
Marine Bacterial Pigment) (Table. 1).