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).