Fueled by methane: deep-sea sponges from asphalt seeps gain their nutrition from methane-oxidizing symbionts.

ABSTRACT: Sponges host a remarkable diversity of microbial symbionts, however, the benefit their microbes provide is rarely understood. Here, we describe two new sponge species from deep-sea asphalt seeps and show that they live in a nutritional symbiosis with methane-oxidizing (MOX) bacteria. Metagenomics and imaging analyses revealed unusually high amounts of MOX symbionts in hosts from a group previously assumed to have low microbial abundances. These symbionts belonged to the Marine Methylotrophic Group 2 clade. They are host-specific and likely vertically transmitted, based on their presence in sponge embryos and streamlined genomes, which lacked genes typical of related free-living MOX. Moreover, genes known to play a role in host-symbiont interactions, such as those that encode eukaryote-like

SUBMITTER: Rubin-Blum M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6474228 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature