ISMJ

Background: Bacterial toxins are toxic compounds which are produced in order to present microbial pathogenicity or to combat with the host immune system response. There is a cumulating evidence indicating bacterial origin for marine toxins such as tetrodotoxin, palytoxin, neosurugatoxin, etc. The most important marine toxins produced by different marine bacteria, their origin, structure and mechanisms of action were evaluated in a systematic review.

Materials & Methods: Marine bacteria, marine bacterial toxins, and their mechanisms of action and structure were keywords for a comprehensive search in online databases including Pubmed, Science Direct, Google Scholar and Scirus. A total of 120 papers were evaluated, however, by omitting similar reports, 103 papers were included in the study.

Results: The most of marine bacterial toxins are classified in one of the following groups: neurotoxins, hepatotoxins and cytotoxins. These toxins have distinct mechanisms of action including blocking of sodium channels in nerve cells, functioning as agonists of acetylcholine receptors, inhibiting of membrane pumps, the inhibition of protein phosphatases 1 and 2A types' enzyme activities and inhibiting of protein synthesis.

Conclusion: The clarification of the marine bacterial toxins structures and their mechanisms of action may be helpful for novel drug design, therapeutic measures and to overcome against bacterial pathogenicity.