Chemosystematic evaluation of Amazonian freshwater sponges

Freshwater sponges can be considered a promising new source of bioactive compounds for the pharmaceutical industry; however, the research on their chemical composition is still in the incipient stage. We evaluated the most endemic Amazonian freshwater sponge species from the Drulia and Metania genera by untargeted metabolomic approaches, based on UHPCL-HRMS, in order to identify chemical markers and explore the diversity of specialized metabolites. The use of untargeted approaches allowed us to observe subsets of metabolites that enabled the characterization of, not only each genus, but also, of each species. Freshwater sponge species presented themselves as rich sources of fatty acids and sterols, which were putatively identified. These metabolites were suggested as chemical markers for further targeted metabolomic studies.