Diversity and antimicrobial potential of culturable heterotrophic bacteria associated with the endemic marine sponge Arenosclera brasiliensis

Cintia P J Rua; Amaro E Trindade-Silva; Luciana R Appolinario; Tainá M Venas; Gizele D Garcia; Lucas S Carvalho; Alinne Lima; Ricardo Kruger; Renato C Pereira; Roberto G S Berlinck; Rogério A B Valle; Cristiane C Thompson; Fabiano Thompson

doi:10.7717/peerj.419

Diversity and antimicrobial potential of culturable heterotrophic bacteria associated with the endemic marine sponge Arenosclera brasiliensis

PeerJ. 2014 Jun 17:2:e419. doi: 10.7717/peerj.419. eCollection 2014.

Affiliations

¹ Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil.
² Faculdade de Tecnologia e Ciências , Salvador, Bahia , Brazil.
³ Departamento de Biologia Celular, Universidade de Brasília , Brasília, DF , Brazil.
⁴ Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense , Niterói, RJ , Brazil.
⁵ Instituto de Química de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo , São Carlos, SP , Brazil.
⁶ SAGE-COPPE Centro de Gestão Tecnológica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil.
⁷ Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil ; SAGE-COPPE Centro de Gestão Tecnológica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro , Rio de Janeiro , Brazil.

Abstract

Marine sponges are the oldest Metazoa, very often presenting a complex microbial consortium. Such is the case of the marine sponge Arenosclera brasiliensis, endemic to Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. In this investigation we characterized the diversity of some of the culturable heterotrophic bacteria living in association with A. brasiliensis and determined their antimicrobial activity. The genera Endozoicomonas (N = 32), Bacillus (N = 26), Shewanella (N = 17), Pseudovibrio (N = 12), and Ruegeria (N = 8) were dominant among the recovered isolates, corresponding to 97% of all isolates. Approximately one third of the isolates living in association with A. brasiliensis produced antibiotics that inhibited the growth of Bacillus subtilis, suggesting that bacteria associated with this sponge play a role in its health.

Keywords: Antimicrobial activity; Bacteria; Porifera; Symbiont.

Grants and funding

We received financial support from CAPES, CNPq (post-doctoral scholarship PDJ160605/2012-1), FAPERJ and FAPESP (grant 2010/50190-2 to RGSB and a post-doctoral scholarship 2009/11612-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.