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. 2011 Feb;77(3):862-70.
doi: 10.1128/AEM.00100-10. Epub 2010 Nov 29.

Exploring the links between natural products and bacterial assemblages in the sponge Aplysina aerophoba

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Exploring the links between natural products and bacterial assemblages in the sponge Aplysina aerophoba

Oriol Sacristán-Soriano et al. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2011 Feb.

Abstract

The sponge Aplysina aerophoba produces a large diversity of brominated alkaloids (BAs) and hosts a complex microbial assemblage. Although BAs are located within sponge cells, the enzymes that bind halogen elements to organic compounds have been exclusively described in algae, fungi, and bacteria. Bacterial communities within A. aerophoba could therefore be involved in the biosynthesis of these compounds. This study investigates whether changes in both the concentration of BAs and the bacterial assemblages are correlated in A. aerophoba. To do so, we quantified major natural products using high-performance liquid chromatography and analyzed bacterial assemblages using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis on the 16S rRNA gene. We identified multiple associations between bacteria and natural products, including a strong relationship between a Chloroflexi phylotype and aplysinamisin-1 and between an unidentified bacterium and aerophobin-2 and isofistularin-3. Our results suggest that these bacteria could either be involved in the production of BAs or be directly affected by them. To our knowledge, this is one of the first reports that find a significant correlation between natural products and bacterial populations in any benthic organism. Further investigating these associations will shed light on the organization and functioning of host-endobiont systems such as Aplysina aerophoba.

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Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
Nonmetric multidimensional scaling based on Bray-Curtis similarity matrices from standardized and square root-transformed abundances of chemical and bacterial data. Significant differences between tissues and specimens (obtained by PERMANOVA) are shown. See the text for details on PERMANOVA.
FIG. 2.
FIG. 2.
Secondary metabolite concentrations (mg g [dry mass] of sponge tissue−1 ± 1 standard error) of the sponge A. aerophoba between ectosome (ECT) and choanosome (CHO) layers. Asterisks (*) indicate significant differences between tissues (P ≤ 0.05). Aero1, aerophobin-1; Aero2, aerophobin-2; Aply1, aplysinamisin-1; Iso3, isofistularin-3.
FIG. 3.
FIG. 3.
OTU relative abundances of the sponge A. aerophoba between ectosome (ECT) and choanosome (CHO) tissue layers. Only OTUs with significant differences between tissues (P ≤ 0.05) are shown.
FIG. 4.
FIG. 4.
Relationship between (A) the concentrations of aerophobin-2 (Aero2) and isofistularin-3 (Iso3) and the relative abundance of the unidentified OTU19 and (B) the concentration of aplysinamisin-1 (Aply1) and the relative abundance of a Chloroflexi clade (OTU7). Concentrations of compounds in mg g (dry mass) of sponge tissue−1 ± 1 standard error. P values are significant after Bonferroni corrections (see the text for details).

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References

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