From drug discovery to coronaviruses: why restoring natural habitats is good for human health

How human health and well-being depends on healthy marine habitats in the Mediterranean: A review

Human health and well-being, and how they are affected by terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have been the subject of numerous studies. In contrast, there are very few such studies relating to marine ecosystems. Here, in the context of the Mediterranean Sea, we assess evidence of the broad interplay of relationships between marine habitats and human health and well-being. Our review shows that the major Mediterranean marine habitats provide various provisioning, cultural and regulating services that improve physical and mental health in a number of different ways. These include: (i) the provision of seafood rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which help to reduce the risk of developing certain types of illnesses; and also, species that produce bioactive compounds that are potential sources of new drugs; (ii) the provision of blue spaces - areas of water suitable for leisure and recreational activities able to inspire, educate, and appeal to the aesthetic senses - that not only increase physical and psychological health, but also foster an individual and collective sense of place and identity and contribute to improving social relations; and (iii) the regulation of climate change, and of water quality and pollution, for example via sequestration of carbon and heavy metals, thus reducing the associated health risks. Our results show that Mediterranean marine habitats are valuable for health and well-being, thus highlighting the need to conserve as much of these habitats as possible (particularly through marine protected areas) and to carry out new studies to determine the specific causal pathways by which certain characteristics of marine habitats - including biotic (e.g. marine biodiversity) and abiotic (e.g. water quality) factors - affect human health and well-being.

PeruNPDB: the Peruvian Natural Products Database for in silico drug screening

Since the number of drugs based on natural products (NPs) represents a large source of novel pharmacological entities, NPs have acquired significance in drug discovery. Peru is considered a megadiverse country with many endemic species of plants, terrestrial, and marine animals, and microorganisms. NPs databases have a major impact on drug discovery development. For this reason, several countries such as Mexico, Brazil, India, and China have initiatives to assemble and maintain NPs databases that are representative of their diversity and ethnopharmacological usage. We describe the assembly, curation, and chemoinformatic evaluation of the content and coverage in chemical space, as well as the physicochemical attributes and chemical diversity of the initial version of the Peruvian Natural Products Database (PeruNPDB), which contains 280 natural products. Access to PeruNPDB is available for free ( https://perunpdb.com.pe/ ). The PeruNPDB's collection is intended to be used in a variety of tasks, such as virtual screening campaigns against various disease targets or biological endpoints. This emphasizes the significance of biodiversity protection both directly and indirectly on human health.