Specialized microbial communities colonize the skin and mucosal barrier surfaces of the oral cavity, digestive, respiratory, and urogenital tracts. Our immune system has evolved to ensure peaceful coexistence with these microorganisms, is important for homeostasis, mutualism symbiosis, pathogen resistance, and digestion in exchange for a nutrient-rich habitat. There is a continuous cross-talk between the microbiota and the host immune system during all stages of life. Deviation from homeostasis is related to onset of disease and specific modulation of this microbiota thus has important long-term health consequences.
Molecules isolated from natural resources can modulate microbial communities, whether they are organised as a biofilm or as a part of a microbiota, in order to dysbiosis or colonisation by pathogens. The perimeter biofilm or microbiota is not always very clear and nowadays numerous studies want to be placed at the level of the microbiota. In this topic, biofilm or microbiota modulation using molecules derived from natural resources will be explored. These molecules can influence community composition and/or its behaviour in such a way that is beneficial for the host.
Additionally, pathogenic microorganisms and their chronic pathogenicity related to their biofilm mode of growth are significant concerns in biomedical research. Biofilm-associated infections are not easy to treat due to elevated tolerance to antimicrobials and presence of multidrug-resistant microbes. Low efficiency of various treatments and in vivo toxicity of available antibiotics and antifungal drugs drive researchers toward the discovery of novel effective natural anti-biofilm agents. Biodiversity is a huge and accessible source for discovering active molecules endowed with original mechanisms of actions.
This special issue will focuses on reviewing various natural anti-microbe, anti-biofilm agents as well as modulating agents, i.e., phytochemicals, biosurfactants, antimicrobial peptides, and microbial enzymes along with their sources, either from plants, marines, soil bacteria, fungi, including its mechanism of action against/maintenance microbiota, bacterial and fungal biofilm, as well as polymicrobial biofilm. It will provide a better understanding on how to extract the active compound of natural resources, the standard procedure of anti-microbe and anti-biofilm assay, and method to determine the different mode of actions and biofilm inhibitory activity against pathogenic species, as well as to modulate the good microbiota. This information can be exploited further to improve the therapeutic strategy by a combination of more than one natural anti-biofilm compounds from diverse sources. Natural anti-microbe, anti-biofilm or microbiota modulating agents are promising candidates which could provide novel strategies for dysbiosis and biofilm-associated infections.
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All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).