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Bacterial Community Analyses of Two Red Sea Sponges

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Abstract

Red Sea sponges offer potential as sources of novel drugs and bioactive compounds. Sponges harbor diverse and abundant prokaryotic communities. The diversity of Egyptian sponge-associated bacterial communities has not yet been explored. Our study is the first culture-based and culture-independent investigation of the total bacterial assemblages associated with two Red Sea Demosponges, Hyrtios erectus and Amphimedon sp. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis fingerprint-based analysis revealed statistically different banding patterns of the bacterial communities of the studied sponges with H. erectus having the greater diversity. 16S rRNA clone libraries of both sponges revealed diverse and complex bacterial assemblages represented by ten phyla for H. erectus and five phyla for Amphimedon sp. The bacterial community associated with H. erectus was dominated by Deltaproteobacteria. Clones affiliated with Gammaproteobacteria were the major component of the clone library of Amphimedon sp. About a third of the 16S rRNA gene sequences in these communities were derived from bacteria that are novel at least at the species level. Although the overall bacterial communities were significantly different, some bacterial groups, including members of Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Actinobacteria, were found in both sponge species. The culture-based component of this study targeted Actinobacteria and resulted in the isolation of 35 sponge-associated microbes. The current study lays the groundwork for future studies of the role of these diverse microbes in the ecology, evolution, and development of marine sponges. In addition, our work provides an excellent resource of several candidate bacteria for production of novel pharmaceutically important compounds.

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Acknowledgment

This work was financially supported by the U.S.–Egypt Science and Technology Joint Fund in cooperation with the USDA and Ministry of Scientific Research in Egypt under Project (BIO8-002-011). The authors thank Matthew Anderson and Arnheidur Eythorsdottir for their help with various aspects of this work. Michelle Kelly at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand is thanked for sponge identifications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, 41522, Egypt

    Mona Radwan, Dina M. Abo-Elmatty & Soad H. Abou-El-Ela

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, 41522, Egypt

    Amro Hanora

  3. Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore, MD, 21202, USA

    Jindong Zan, Naglaa M. Mohamed & Russell T. Hill

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  1. Mona Radwan
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Correspondence to Russell T. Hill.

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Radwan, M., Hanora, A., Zan, J. et al. Bacterial Community Analyses of Two Red Sea Sponges. Mar Biotechnol 12, 350–360 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-009-9239-5

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