Samples of Sinularia sp. were collected from the North Java Sea, homogenised and spread on MEA medium. Colonies of fungi, identified by morphological features, were purified. After incubation of these colonies, Candida albicans or Aspergillus flavus were added to the plates and left for further incubation. It is unclear from the methods, whether the infectious fungi were separate or together. To see if antifungal activity had occurred, the formation of inhibition zones was monitored. Extracts from fungi colonies were sequenced and the constituents identified by phytochemical tests.
Only one fungal associate, of 15, was found to inhibit the growth of both infectious fungi. The symbiotic fungi had 99% similarity to Aspergillus unguis. Phytochemical tests revealed the presence of phenols which can act as fungicide, flavonoids which can disrupt membrane function and biosynthetic processes, as well as terpenoids which have antimicrobial properties. All suggesting that there could be potential applications of coral associated fungi in pharmaceuticals, but a lot more research is necessary.
This paper was hard to read and the introduction gave little background knowledge, most of it is given in the discussion. The justification was based largely on pharmaceuticals and little else. I feel like they are jumping the gun in looking into human pathogenic fungi; that they are trying to be the first in a much underexplored area. I feel as though there should be more marine research to act as a basis for further research on human fungal diseases. This paper is littered with mistakes, including incorrect spellings. Despite all these issues with writing, it doesn’t seem to be bad science and does look into an area that basically nothing is known about.
Hi Chlobro,
ReplyDeleteInteresting paper you have here, my interest really focuses on the results that came out of it. 1/15 is actually a pretty high number of anti-fungal compounds found in the coral. That's just over 6.6%, if this was applied to the hundreds of coral species, the possibility of a large number of potential anti-fungi compounds is staggering! I'm not saying this would hold true but using these figures alone it is something to be excited about.
To give it to the authors, I can see why they may have "Jumped the Gun" with this one as it is an amazing find with possible momentous benefits if followed up!
Thanks for the review,
Stefan
As Davis has shown, I also "Jumped the Gun" a bit, great follow up by Davis! Something that I defiantly missed!
DeleteHey chlobro,
ReplyDeleteI really wouldn’t trust a single word in this paper. Following your post, I was curious as to how bad spelling mistakes could be in a journal and, having read the paper myself, I was not disappointed – to the extent I did not believe that this is even a real paper. It turns out, Procedia Environmental Science is a journal that focuses on rapidly publishing the submissions to selected conferences and takes no responsibility for peer review – it is the responsibility of those who organised the conference itself in exchange for special issues about their work. Clearly, this has not worked. While English is obviously not the first language of the authors, this is not the point. Whoever is responsible for the review of this manuscript, and has stamped this as ‘acceptable for publication’ cannot be relied upon to scrutinise the scientific validity of these findings. It is not a matter of whether the science is bad or not (although I believe that this does look like bad science: it has no mention of any replicates and the description of methods lacks reproducible details), but rather there is no way to know when the publication is this poor. Aspergillus unguis is a common household mould previously identified in water-logged plaster (Tuomi et al, 2000) and, as I have no reason to trust that this work has been done well, I parsimoniously suggest that it is a contaminant. I am incredibly sceptical as to whether anything can be extrapolated or built on from these findings, as I cannot validate them as true. Do you really think the findings of this study as biologically true?
Thanks,
Davis
Tuomi, T., Reijula, K., Johnsson, T., Hemminki, K., Hintikka, E. L., Lindroos, O., ... & Haahtela, T. (2000). Mycotoxins in crude building materials from water-damaged buildings. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 66(5), 1899-1904. http://aem.asm.org/content/66/5/1899.short
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DeleteHi,
DeleteI have to be honest, I did not think to look into the validity of this journal. Despite this clearly not being a high impact or perhaps reputable journal, I cannot see reason why these results may not biologically true. Although possible that Aspergillus unguis is a contaminant, I have also read of this fungi being marine derived (Sureram et al, 2013). I have found papers that demonstrate it can be isolated and cultured from a marine sponge, Agelas sp. (El-Hady et al, 2014) and red alga Ahnfeltiopsis flabelliformis (Zhang et al, 2014). Both of these papers show it has bioactive properties, including: antioxidant capabilities; antiproliferation of lung cancer cells (Zhang et al, 2014); as well as inhibition of enzymes that could help treat Alzheimer’s and prevent diabetes (El-Hady et al, 2014). As this fungus clearly has very biologically active compounds, I believe it is perfectly possible that the findings of Putri and his team are true. I am by no means saying this research is conclusive, or even necessarily correct, and further studies should definitely look into this area more thoroughly than Putri et al.
Chloe
El-Hady, F. K. A., Abdel-Aziz, M. S., Shaker, K. H., El-Shahid, Z. A., & Ibrahim, L. S. (2014) Antioxidant, Acetylcholinesterase and α-Glucosidase Potentials of Metabolites from the Marine Fungus Aspergillus unguis RSPG_204 Associated with the Sponge (Agelas sp.). International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Review and Research, 30(1), 272-278
Sureram, S., Kesornpun, C., Mahidol, C., Ruchirawat, S., & Kittakoop, P. (2013). Directed biosynthesis through biohalogenation of secondary metabolites of the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus unguis. RSC Advances,3(6), 1781-1788.
Zhang, Y., Mu, J., Feng, Y., Wen, L., & Han, J. (2014). Four chlorinated depsidones from a seaweed-derived strain of Aspergillus unguis and their new biological activities. Natural product research, 28(7), 503-506.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHey Chloe,
DeleteThank you for bringing those papers to my attention, however I fear you have missed the point of my last post. While your subsequent research has shown that A. unguis may be an exciting marine source of novel pharmaceuticals (and it’s a shame you didn’t choose one of those papers for your blog post!), the paper presented originally cannot stand alongside these findings as competent science. This is not about impact factor, nor reputation, but the core nature of the peer-review process and how much scientific advancement owes to it. Central to the scientific method is that the burden of proof lies with the accuser – findings are intrinsically false unless substantial evidence is provided otherwise. I cannot, it is true, disprove these findings – nor can I disprove Leprechauns or Mermaids - however no credible evidence was provided by the authors to convince me that what they found is correct. A good recent example of this is infamous tardigrade genome, (Boothby TC, et al. (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(52):15976–15981). Could it be that 1/6 of tardigrade genomes were HGT from bacteria? Sure it could, HGT is prevalent and tardigrades are weird, but subsequent work (Bemm et al 2016) showed the sequencing was flawed and the authors had not provided sufficient evidence to support such a bold claim, and therefore it is parsimonious to suggest that these genes are a contamination and the finding is rejected.
It is not my responsibility to disprove the original authors' findings, they must convince me. This ‘peer-review process’ was so poor, so subpar, that as far as I am concerned this experiment did not happen, is not correct, and has made no contribution to science. It is not our responsibility to give the benefit of the doubt and while it is good to be open minded, we should not be so open minded that our brains fall out (to paraphrase a quote usually attributed the controversial skeptic Richard Dawkins). It is irrelevant as to how much external context that exists in the field, the only thing to be learnt from this study is that the peer review process often fails and that we should not intrinsically trust something just because it can be referenced in APA format.
Thanks for your time,
Davis
Bemm, F., Weiß, C. L., Schultz, J., & Förster, F. (2016). Genome of a tardigrade: Horizontal gene transfer or bacterial contamination?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(22), E3054-E3056.