Abstract
Coral microbial flora has been attracting attention because of their potential to protect corals from environmental stresses or pathogens. Although coral-associated bacteria are considered to be acquired from seawater, little is known about the relationships between microbial composition in corals and its surrounding seawater. Here, we tested several methods to identify coral-associated bacteria in coral and its surrounding seawater to detect specific types of Ruegeria species, some of which exhibit growth inhibition activities against the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus. We first isolated coral-associated bacteria from the reef-building coral Galaxea fascicularis collected at Sesoko Island, Okinawa, Japan, via random colony picking, which showed the existence of varieties of bacteria including Ruegeria species. Using newly constructed primers for colony PCR, several Ruegeria species were successfully isolated from G. fascicularis and seawater. We further investigated the seawater microbiome in association with the distance from coral reefs. By seasonal sampling, it was suggested that the seawater microbiome is more affected by seasonality than the distance from coral reefs. These methods and results may contribute to investigating and understanding the relationships between the presence of corals and microbial diversity in seawater, in addition to the efficient isolation of specific bacterial species from coral or its surrounding seawater.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Mr. Yoshikatsu Nakano of the University of the Ryukyus for the helpful discussions and suggestions regarding the determination of sampling locations. We also thank Mr. Shohei Kadena of the University of the Ryukyus for the assistance in field sampling. Coral sampling was carried out with the approval of the authorities of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.
Funding
This study was supported by the Collaborative Research of Tropical Biosphere Research Center, University of the Ryukyus, as well as Grants-in-Aid for Young Scientists (JSPS KAKENHI) (NM, JP19K15739; MI, JP17K15402; TT, JP18K14479, JP21K14766), a Grant for Environmental Research Projects from Nippon Life Insurance Foundation (NM), a Research Grant from Sugiyama Chemical & Industrial Laboratory (NM), and JST, ACT-X Grant Number JPMJAX20B9, Japan (TT).
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Conceptualization: NM, MI, TT; design of experiments: NM, RK, MI, TT; experiments: RK, Y Nishikawa, Y Nishimura, NM, MI, TT; collection of seawater: MI, TT, NM; collection of corals: TT, HY; data analysis: RK, NM, MI, KK; writing original draft: RK, NM; reviewing and editing the manuscript: NM, MI, TT, HY, MK; reviewing and approving the final manuscript: RK, NM, MI, TT, HY, Y Nishikawa, Y Nishimura, KK, MK.
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Kitamura, R., Miura, N., Ito, M. et al. Specific Detection of Coral-Associated Ruegeria, a Potential Probiotic Bacterium, in Corals and Subtropical Seawater. Mar Biotechnol 23, 576–589 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-021-10047-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-021-10047-2