Numerous novel pharmaceuticals and therapeutics originate as chemicals isolated from microbes. Sea sponges, which can be upto 35% microbes by mass, make perfect candidates for discovery of new medicines, like antibiotics or anti-cancer treatments. My project this summer consisted of analyzing the chemicals produced by the sea sponge Clathria prolifera. Since microbes synthesize many chemicals the sponge cannot make itself, I also isolated different species of microbes found within the sponge and a catalog of each species was kept.

The first chemicals I selected to conduct further research on were carotenoids- a group of pigments that ranged in color from red to orange that are responsible for the sponge’s orange color. Carotenoids are nonpolar compounds, which means they have neither a positive or negative charge, so in order to isolate them column chromatography. This is a process used to separate compounds based on polarity, so it was used to remove the non-polar carotenoids from the crude solution. Additionally, isolated and classified strains of microorganisms were grown on petri dishes in a pattern to ensure intersection. This was done to look for regions between the two colonies that would display antimicrobial activity- the impediment of growth of one colony.