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Antimicrobial activity of Red Sea corals

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Abstract

Scleractinian corals and alcyonacean soft corals are the two most dominant groups of benthic marine organisms inhabiting the coral reefs of the Gulf of Eilat, northern Red Sea. Antimicrobial assays performed with extracts of six dominant Red Sea stony corals and six dominant soft corals against marine bacteria isolated from the seawater surrounding the corals revealed considerable variability in antimicrobial activity. The results demonstrated that, while the majority (83%) of Red Sea alcyonacean soft corals exhibited appreciable antimicrobial activity against marine bacteria isolated from the seawater surrounding the corals, the stony corals had little or no antimicrobial activity. From the active soft coral species examined, Xenia macrospiculata exhibited the highest and most potent antimicrobial activity. Bioassay-directed fractionation indicated that the antimicrobial activity was due to the presence of a range of compounds of different polarities. One of these antibiotic compounds was isolated and identified as desoxyhavannahine, with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 48 μg ml−1 against a marine bacterium. The results of the current study suggest that soft and hard corals have developed different means to combat potential microbial infections. Alcyonacean soft corals use chemical defense through the production of antibiotic compounds to combat microbial attack, whereas stony corals seem to rely on other means.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the staff of the Inter University Institute of Marine Biology at Eilat for their hospitality and facilities. We thank A. Rudi for the NMR work, A. Price, R. Gottlieb, N. Avni, and A. Gottlieb for their laboratory assistance, and I. Brickner for the coral identification and assistance with the image analysis software. The suggestions of two anonymous reviewers significantly improved the quality of the manuscript. This research was supported by a grant from Israel Ministry of Science and Technology. The corals used in the current study were collected under permission from Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority.

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  1. Dovi Kelman

    Present address: Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the National Center for High Throughput Screening (HTS) of Novel Bioactive Compounds, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Dovi Kelman & Yossi Loya

  2. School of Chemistry and the National Center for High Throughput Screening (HTS) of Novel Bioactive Compounds, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Yoel Kashman

  3. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  4. Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Ariel Kushmaro

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  1. Dovi Kelman
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Correspondence to Dovi Kelman.

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Communicated by O. Kinne, Oldendorf/Luhe

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Kelman, D., Kashman, Y., Rosenberg, E. et al. Antimicrobial activity of Red Sea corals. Marine Biology 149, 357–363 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-005-0218-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-005-0218-8

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