Novel metagenomics analysis of stony coral tissue loss disease.

ABSTRACT: Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has devastated coral reefs off the coast of Florida and continues to spread throughout the Caribbean. Although a number of bacterial taxa have consistently been associated with SCTLD, no pathogen has been definitively implicated in the etiology of SCTLD. Previous studies have predominantly focused on the prokaryotic community through 16S rRNA sequencing of healthy and affected tissues. Here, we provide a different analytical approach by applying a bioinformatics pipeline to publicly available metagenomic sequencing samples of SCTLD lesions and healthy tissues from four stony coral species. To compensate for the lack of coral reference genomes, we used data from apparently healthy coral samples to approximate a host genome and healthy microbiome refer

SUBMITTER: Heinz JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10802270 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature