ABOVE: The Great
Barrier Reef spans
344,400km^2 – that’s a
lot of area to search for
potential drugs
RIGHT: Shipwrecks act
as artifical reefs and
become colonised with
many speciesPREVIOUS PAGE:
1 Diving the Great Lakes
2 Testing antibiotics
in the lab
3 Animals on coral
reefs have evolved
interesting chemical
defences
4 One of Brian Murphy’s
students leaps into the
water to hunt for
new drugs
5 The Great Lakes in the
US are a popular dive
spot as they contain
hundreds of
well-preserved
shipwrecks
6 Michael Mullowney
(left) and Brian Murphy
processing deep-sea
sediments
7 Gathering Icelandic
algae for research
8 Brian Murphy with
bacteria he’s collected- some of these colonies
contain a specific group
of bacteria that’s widely
used in antibiotics
9 Bioprospectors first
looked to coral reefs
in the 1950s
The hope is that nature has
plenty more in its medicine
cabinet for us to dip into
an immense diversity of life. They
include many animals that evolved
complex chemical defences, along
with a profusion of microbes; it is
thought that around 90 per cent
of oceanic life is microscopic.
From among these creatures,
researchers are uncovering
molecules that could form the
basis for new medicines.
Tapping the natural world for
pharmaceuticals is nothing new –
pop an aspirin and your headache
will be soothed by a substance
that was discovered in willow tree
bark. With the rising tide of drug
resistance, the hope is that nature
has plenty more in its medicine
cabinet for us to dip into. The trick
is sifting through all those potent
chemicals to find the ones that could
fight disease.
“It’s no secret that there’s
an incredibly high failure rate in
developing drugs,” says Murphy.
“It’s really difficult to find a set
of molecules that can target a
specific disease and do it within the
incredibly complex environment of
the human body.”
To help with this, Murphy is
working to smarten up the sample
collection process, as it’s one of
the few steps in drug development
that hasn’t seen a major revolution
in recent decades. According to
Murphy, looking for molecules
in original places is an important
part of drug development, so he
decided to use a new resource
altogether: the general public.
Chatting with recreational scuba
divers gave Murphy the idea of
searching shipwrecks for sponges.
These unprepossessing animals
spend most of their lives stuck in
place, sifting the water for food
and taking on hordes of bacteria.
“Bacteria can constitute up to 30
or 40 per cent of sponge biomass,”
Murphy explains. Freshwater
sponges are a common sight
across the USA’s Great LakesSCIENCE