Specificity and transcriptional activity of microbiota associated with low and high microbial abundance sponges from the Red Sea
Type
ArticleAuthors
Moitinho-Silva, LucasBayer, Kristina
Cannistraci, Carlo
Giles, Emily
Ryu, Tae Woo
Seridi, Loqmane

Ravasi, Timothy

Hentschel, Ute T E
KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionComputational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC)
Bioscience Program
Integrative Systems Biology Lab
Computer Science Program
Date
2013-08-20Online Publication Date
2013-08-20Print Publication Date
2014-03Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/562913
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Marine sponges are generally classified as high microbial abundance (HMA) and low microbial abundance (LMA) species. Here, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was applied to investigate the diversity, specificity and transcriptional activity of microbes associated with an LMA sponge (Stylissa carteri), an HMA sponge (Xestospongia testudinaria) and sea water collected from the central Saudi Arabia coast of the Red Sea. Altogether, 887 068 denoised sequences were obtained, of which 806 661 sequences remained after quality control. This resulted in 1477 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that were assigned to 27 microbial phyla. The microbial composition of S. carteri was more similar to that of sea water than to that of X. testudinaria, which is consistent with the observation that the sequence data set of S. carteri contained many more possibly sea water sequences (~24%) than the X. testudinaria data set (~6%). The most abundant OTUs were shared between all three sources (S. carteri, X. testudinaria, sea water), while rare OTUs were unique to any given source. Despite this high degree of overlap, each sponge species contained its own specific microbiota. The X. testudinaria-specific bacterial taxa were similar to those already described for this species. A set of S. carteri-specific bacterial taxa related to Proteobacteria and Nitrospira was identified, which are likely permanently associated with S. carteri. The transcriptional activity of sponge-associated microorganisms correlated well with their abundance. Quantitative PCR revealed the presence of Poribacteria, representing typical sponge symbionts, in both sponge species and in sea water; however, low transcriptional activity in sea water suggested that Poribacteria are not active outside the host context. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Citation
Moitinho-Silva, L., Bayer, K., Cannistraci, C. V., Giles, E. C., Ryu, T., Seridi, L., … Hentschel, U. (2013). Specificity and transcriptional activity of microbiota associated with low and high microbial abundance sponges from the Red Sea. Molecular Ecology, 23(6), 1348–1363. doi:10.1111/mec.12365Sponsors
We thank the Coastal and Marine Resources Core Lab and the Biosciences Core Laboratory at KAUST. We acknowledge Susanne Schmitt for suggestion of PCR primers and Eva Reisberg for interesting discussions. The insightful comments of three anonymous reviewers have improved the quality of our manuscript. LM-S was supported by a grant of the German Excellence Initiative to the Graduate School of Life Sciences, University of Wuerzburg. Additional financial support was provided by KAUST baseline funds to TR.Publisher
WileyJournal
Molecular EcologyPubMed ID
23957633ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/mec.12365
Scopus Count
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