Abstract

Nature has provided man the thriving resources of bioactive compounds in the form of microbes. These compounds may find important therapeutic utilities. Terrestrial mesophilic microbial flora and a little of marine flora have been well explored for screening bioactive compounds. The constant demand for new chemical scaffolds from healthcare sector aggravates the quest for new chemical entities (NCEs) or compounds with new chemical applications (NCAs). Diversity in microbial types envisaged to add variations in secondary metabolites they synthesize. Ecological units with extremes of physical and chemical conditions harbors distinctive group of microbes. These are genetically well acclimatized to the stress conditions there. Their adaptation ability makes them producer of dissimilar class of compounds.

Hot springs or geysers are such ecological niches with high temperatures. Some springs are related to volcanic activity where invariably sulfur content is higher. The niches had been studied mainly from their biodiversity point of view. There have been occasional reports of their bioactive potential from drug discovery perspectives. The author and his team had studied hot-springs microbes from Maharashtra, Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh in India for their therapeutic potential. Compound fusaricidin B was isolated from eubacteria (Paenibacillus sp.) which was derived from hot springs in Uttarkashi district of Uttaranchal state. The compound was repositioned for its anti-tuberculosis activity. The potential of such hot spring microbes as source of bioactive compounds will be reviewed in the presentation.