Polynesian, Martinique's, Reunion's marine benthic invertebrates : interactions and chemodiversity evaluation for a sustainable use – POMARE

The marine living resources from selected sites and habitat of three French OT’s and OR’s located in three oceans all around the world are a treasure box to be discovered and understood. The objective of the consortium, with all its facilities and expertise, is to explore marine invertebrates and so to act for their protection through chemical ecology studies, and for biotechnological applications through the valorisation of identified compounds and their biological activities. Particular emphasis will be given to sponges and corals, since these are considered most important in coral reef ecosystems and environment. Sponges are also important candidates for the search of bioactive natural products: the project will explore the under-utilized marine natural products as novel pharmaceutical, cosmetic or local-industry products such as pearl farming or for the restoration of some marine invertebrates.


Focusing on sessile invertebrates, the aim of the project is to rationalize sampling, field studies and chemical investigations in such a way that the results could be used for interdisciplinary implementation. Our project aims to characterize and preserve biodiversity using sequencing methods and implementation of genomic repositories for its sustainable conservation, but also by setting up efficient synthesis methods to prevent large scale harvesting. A database will be set up to gather results and benefits of the closely related fields of research met here in natural products chemistry, chemical ecology, chemotaxonomy and drug discovery. Field trip results and organisms lists, chemical profiling and metabolomic analysis, biological and ecological activities will be made accessible to consortium members, stakeholders, and decision makers.

Biomimetic production improves the availability of interesting secondary metabolites and avoids destructive in situ harvesting processes (e.g. in endangered coral reefs).
It is assumed that in most cases, marine source cannot provide the quantities of metabolites needed for environment friendly industrial valorisation. Chemistry is one of the possible sustainable production pathways. Metabolomic studies of the selected organisms will fully target the understanding of the biosynthetic pathways in order to use them in biomimetic synthesis of challenging complex natural metabolites. The chemists aim is to reach a maximum of natural products analogs allowing a controlled generation of chemical diversity.

The project will start, where appropriate with the existing collections of marine organisms that have been already assembled during ongoing programs, and will be developed with further sampling in each OT and OR.