Project description:Colonization of deep-sea hydrothermal vents by invertebrates was made efficient through their adaptation to a symbiotic lifestyle with chemosynthetic bacteria, the primary producers of these ecosystems. Anatomical adaptations such as the establishment of specialized cells or organs have been evidenced in numerous deep-sea invertebrates. However, very few studies detailed global inter-dependencies between host and symbionts in these ecosystems. In this study, we proposed to describe, using a proteo-transcriptomic approach, the effects of symbionts on the deep-sea mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus’ molecular biology. We induced an in situ depletion of symbionts and compared the proteo-transcriptome of the gills of mussels in three conditions: symbiotic mussels (natural population), symbiont-depleted mussels and aposymbiotic mussels
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:To determine the optimal RNA-Seq approach for animal host-bacterial symbiont analysis, we compared transcriptome bias, depth and coverage achieved by two different mRNA capture and sequencing strategies applied to the marine demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica holobiont, for which genomes of the animal host and three most abundant bacterial symbionts are available.
Project description:As marine invertebrates, scallops lack adaptive immunity and employ innate immunity as the front line and almost the solo defense mechanism to protect them against invaders. Accumulating research achievements demonstrated that exosomes could act as innate immune effectors that contribute to host defense mechanism. To better understand the immune functions of exosomes in Chlamys farreri, miRNA profiles of hemocytes from scallops injected with PBS, with normal exosomes and LPS stimulating exosomes, respectively, were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate.
Project description:Chemosynthetic symbioses between bacteria and invertebrates occur worldwide in a wide range of marine habitats. Although they have been intensively investigated, molecular physiological studies of chemoautotrophic bacteria colonizing the surface of animals (ectosymbioses) are scarce. Stilbonematinae nematodes are the only known invertebrates capable of cultivating monocultures of thiotrophic Gammaproteobacteria on their surface. Crucially, as these nematodes migrate through the redox zone of marine sediments, the ectosymbionts directly experience drastic variations in oxygen concentration. Here, by applying an array of omics, Raman microspectroscopy and stable isotope labeling-based techniques, we investigated the effect of varying concentrations of dissolved oxygen on physiology and metabolism of Candidatus Thiosymbion oneisti, the longitudinally dividing ectosymbiont of Laxus oneistus. We show that, unexpectedly, sulfur oxidation genes were upregulated in anoxic relative to oxic conditions, and that carbon fixation genes and incorporation of 13C-labeled bicarbonate were not. Instead, several genes involved in carbon fixation in addition to genes responsible for assimilating organic carbon compounds and polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biosynthesis, as well as nitrogen fixation and urea utilization genes were upregulated in oxic versus anoxic conditions. Furthermore, in the presence of oxygen, stress-related genes were upregulated together with vitamin and cofactor biosynthesis genes likely necessary to withstand its deleterious effects. Based on this first global physiological study of an uncultured, chemosynthetic ectosymbiont, we propose that, in anoxic pore water, it proliferates by utilizing nitrate to oxidize reduced sulfur compounds, whereas, when exposed to oxygen, it exploits aerobic respiration to facilitate energetically costly assimilation of carbon and nitrogen to survive oxidative stress. Both anaerobic sulfur oxidation and its decoupling from carbon fixation represent unprecedented adaptations among chemosynthetic symbionts. We postulate that Ca. T. oneisti originated from an obligate anaerobic, denitrifying sulfur-oxidizer, which, while transitioning from the free-living to the symbiotic lifestyle, evolved mechanisms to survive the oxidative stress inherent to a life attached to an animal.
Project description:The Lucinidae is a large family of marine bivalves. They occur in diverse habitats from shallow-water seagrass sediments to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. All members of this family so far investigated host intracellular sulfur-oxidizing symbionts that belong to the Gammaproteobacteria. We recently discovered the capability for nitrogen fixation in draft genomes of the symbionts of Loripes lucinalis from the Bay of Fetovaia, Elba, Italy. With proteomics, we investigated whether the genes for nitrogen fixation are expressed by the symbionts.
Project description:Samples collect to investigate the gene activity from microbial populations in marine steel corrosion, and to compare with gene activity in water and bed sediment samples from the surrounding area. The study was undertaken to (1) investigate mechanisms of microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) of marine steel, and (2) compare microbial population gene activity between corrosion and the surrounding environment. Purified DNA (1µg) was labelled with Cy3, purified and hybridised at 42°C for 16h with the GeoChipTM 5.0 on a MAUI hybridisation station (BioMicro, USA).