Marine Sponge Endosymbionts: Structural and Functional Specificity of the Microbiome within Cells.

Sponge microbiomes are typically profiled by analyzing the community DNA of whole tissues, which does not distinguish the taxa residing within sponge cells from extracellular microbes. To uncover the endosymbiotic microbiome, we separated the sponge cells to enrich the intracellular microbes. The intracellular bacterial community of sponge was initially assessed by amplicon sequencing, which indicated that it hosts three unique phyla not found in the extracellular and bulk tissue microbiomes.

Cellular localization of debromohymenialdisine and hymenialdisine in the marine sponge Axinella sp. using a newly developed cell purification protocol.

Sponges (Porifera), as the best known source of bioactive marine natural products in metazoans, play a significant role in marine drug discovery and development. As sessile filter-feeding animals, a considerable portion of the sponge biomass can be made of endosymbiotic and associated microorganisms. Understanding the cellular origin of targeted bioactive compounds from sponges is therefore important not only for providing chemotaxonomic information but also for defining the bioactive production strategy in terms of sponge aquaculture, cell culture, or fermentation of associated bacteria.