Marine habitats harbour a large variety of organisms that belong to diverse taxa; from bacteria and unicellular eukaryotes to fungi, animals, and plants. Although we have only started to understand the diversity and structure of marine communities, it is clear that numerous marine species have or might have an impact on human health. Some are a source of natural products with potential or actual medical applications, others are toxic and harmful to humans, and some are used in biomedical research to help understand the molecular basis of human diseases. New molecular genetics and genomic methods provide powerful and ever more indispensable tools for studying marine organisms and all aspects of their influence on human health. Herein, we present work using the latest research, which mostly uses genomics, to tackle the questions related with the topic of the issue.
Keywords: biosynthetic pathways; disease-related genes; genetic diversity and biodiversity; metagenomic approach; models for biomedical research; molecular genetics and genomics.