Characterizing the Bacterial Communities Associated with Mediterranean Sponges: a Metataxonomic Analysis

Overview

Journal Front Microbiol

Specialty Microbiology

Date 2024 Jan 26

PMID 38274771

Authors

Roberta Esposito

Serena Federico

Michele Sonnessa

Sofia Reddel

Marco Bertolino

Nadia Ruocco

Giacomo Zagami

Marco Giovine

Marina Pozzolini

Marco Guida

Valerio Zupo

Maria Costantini

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The oceans cover over 70% of our planet, hosting a biodiversity of tremendous wealth. Sponges are one of the major ecosystem engineers on the seafloor, providing a habitat for a wide variety of species to be considered a good source of bioactive compounds. In this study, a metataxonomic approach was employed to describe the bacterial communities of the sponges collected from Faro Lake (Sicily) and Porto Paone (Gulf of Naples). Morphological analysis and amplification of the conserved molecular markers, including 18S and 28S (RNA ribosomal genes), CO1 (mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1), and ITS (internal transcribed spacer), allowed the identification of four sponges. Metataxonomic analysis of sponges revealed a large number of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) belonging to the phyla Proteobacteria, Cloroflexi, Dadabacteria, and Poribacteria. In particular, () and () displayed several classes such as Alphaproteobacteria, Dehalococcoidia, Gammaproteobacteria, Cyanobacteria, and Bacteroidia. On the other hand, the sponges and hosted bacteria belonging to the classes Dadabacteriia, Anaerolineae, Acidimicrobiia, Nitrospiria, and Poribacteria. Moreover, for the first time, the presence of Rhizobiaceae bacteria was revealed in the sponge . () , which was mainly associated with soil and plants and involved in biological nitrogen fixation.

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