Recruitment Variability of Coral Reef Sessile Communities of the Far North Great Barrier Reef.

One of the key components in assessing marine sessile organism demography is determining recruitment patterns to benthic habitats. An analysis of serially deployed recruitment tiles across depth (6 and 12 m), seasons (summer and winter) and space (meters to kilometres) was used to quantify recruitment assemblage structure (abundance and percent cover) of corals, sponges, ascidians, algae and other sessile organisms from the northern sector of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Polychaetes were most abundant on recruitment titles, reaching almost 50% of total recruitment, yet covered <5% of each tile.

Diversity of Marine-Derived Fungal Cultures Exposed by DNA Barcodes: The Algorithm Matters.

Marine fungi are an understudied group of eukaryotic microorganisms characterized by unresolved genealogies and unstable classification. Whereas DNA barcoding via the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) provides a robust and rapid tool for fungal species delineation, accurate classification of fungi is often arduous given the large number of partial or unknown barcodes and misidentified isolates deposited in public databases. This situation is perpetuated by a paucity of cultivable fungal strains available for phylogenetic research linked to these data sets.

Guiding principles for natural product drug discovery.

Natural products (NPs) have historically been a fertile source of new drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. However, this once-popular approach has waned considerably over the past two decades as the high-throughput screening of megalibraries comprised mainly of molecules with non-natural (synthetic) motifs has unfolded. Contemporary high-throughput screening libraries contain molecules compliant with physicochemical profiles considered essential for downstream development.

Bacterial community dynamics in the marine sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile under in situ and ex situ cultivation.

Cultivation of sponges is being explored to supply biomaterial for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. This study assesses the impact of various cultivation methods on the microbial community within the sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile during: (1) in situ cultivation under natural environmental conditions, (2) ex situ cultivation in small flow-through aquaria and (3) ex situ cultivation in large mesocosm systems. Principal components analysis of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis profiles indicated a stable microbial community in sponges cultured in situ (grown in the wild) and in sponges cultured ex situ in small flow-through aquaria over 12 weeks.

A tropical marine microbial natural products geobibliography as an example of desktop exploration of current research using web visualisation tools.

Microbial marine biodiscovery is a recent scientific endeavour developing at a time when information and other technologies are also undergoing great technical strides. Global visualisation of datasets is now becoming available to the world through powerful and readily available software such as Worldwind, ArcGIS Explorer and Google Earth. Overlaying custom information upon these tools is within the hands of every scientist and more and more scientific organisations are making data available that can also be integrated into these global visualisation tools.