Project description:Marine sponges are essential for coral reefs to thrive and harbour a diverse microbiome that is thought to contribute to host health. Although the overall function of sponge symbionts has been increasingly described, in-depth characterisation of each taxa remains challenging, with many sponge species hosting up to 3,000 distinct microbial species. Recently, the sponge Ianthella basta has emerged as a model organism for symbiosis research, hosting only three dominant symbionts: a Thaumarchaeotum, a Gammaproteobacterium, and an Alphaproteobacterium and a range of other minor taxa. Here, we retrieved metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) for >90% of I. basta’s microbial community which allowed us to make a complete metabolic reconstruction of the sponge’s microbiome, identifying metabolic complementarity between microbes, as well as the importance of symbionts present in low abundance. We also mined the metagenomes for putative viral sequences, highlighting the contribution of viruses to the overall metabolism of the sponge, and complement this data with metaproteomic sequencing to identify active metabolic pathways in both prokaryotes and viruses. This data now allows us to use I. basta as a model organism for studying host-microbe interactions and provides a basis for future (genomic) manipulative experiments.
Project description:Neopetrotaurines A-C, isoquinoline quinone-linked isoquinoline alkaloids that possess a unique taurine bridge connecting the two bicyclic components, were isolated from a Neopetrosia sp. marine sponge. These new compounds have proton-deficient scaffolds, so their structure elucidation was facilitated by utilizing LR-HSQMBC and HMBC NMR experiments optimized to detect 4- and 5-bond long-range 1H-13C heteronuclear correlations. Neopetrotaurines A-C showed potent inhibition of transcription driven by the oncogenic fusion protein PAX3-FOXO1 in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma.
