Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2017

Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster E24

Unraveling host-microbe interactions in the marine sponge Halichondria panicea through high-throughput 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing and functional metagenomics

Höfundar / Authors: Stephen Knobloch (1,3), Ragnar Jóhannsson (2) and Viggó Thór Marteinsson (1,3 )

Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: 1. Matís ohf., 2. Hafrannsóknastofnun, 3. Háskóli Íslands

Kynnir / Presenter: Stephen Knobloch

Many marine sponges harbor secondary metabolite producing bacteria with biotechnological importance. Understanding the role and function of the microbiota inside the sponge will allow us to apply targeted isolation strategies and harness their potential bioactivities. Identifying which bacteria represent temporal and geographically stable members of the sponge holobiont is a prerequisite for studying these host-microbe interactions. In this study we focus on the marine sponge Halichondria panicea (Pallas, 1766) distributed along the Icelandic coast. In order to study the stability and specificity of a H. panicea microbiota we applied 16S rRNA gene tag sequencing on sponge and seawater samples collected from different geographical locations. Here we show that a bacterial species belonging to the family Rhodobacteraceae is the dominant and single stable associated bacteria within H. panicea. 16S rRNA Fluorescence In-Situ Hybridization further confirms the presence and distributions of the bacteria throughout the sponge body and indicates a close relationship between the host and the stable bacteria. Metagenomic sequencing of a bacterially enriched fraction gives first insights into the potential bioactivity and metabolic characteristics of this putative sponge symbiont.