AI Article Synopsis

  • Several studies indicate that sponge metabolite yields can vary due to time, location, and individual differences, but the reasons for these variations are not well understood.
  • Dysidea avara, a type of demosponge known for its medically significant sesquiterpenoids, was investigated to measure metabolite yields and explore the influence of external factors like seasonality and internal factors such as reproductive stages.
  • The study revealed that while there's significant variability in metabolite production over time, it did not correlate with seawater temperature or reproductive cycles; however, it did find that sponge neighbors could affect the production of secondary metabolites, suggesting potential new methods for enhancing metabolite yields in sponge cultures.

Article Abstract

Several studies report temporal, geographical, and intra-individual variation in sponge metabolite yields. However, the internal and/or external factors that regulate the metabolite production remain poorly understood. Dysidea avara is a demosponge that produces sesquiterpenoids (avarol and derivatives) with interesting medical properties, which has prompted addressed studies to obtain enough amounts of these metabolites for research on drug discovery. Within this framework, specimens of Dysidea avara from a population of the Northwest Mediterranean were sampled and their secondary metabolites quantified to assess their variability and the possible relationship with external (seasonality, interactions with neighbors) and internal (reproductive stages) factors. The results show a variation of the amount of both avarol and its monoacetate derivative with time, with no clear relationship with seawater temperature. A trade-off with sponge reproduction was not found either. However, our results showed for the first time that sponges are able to increase production or accumulation of secondary metabolites in their peripheral zone depending on the nature of their neighbors. This finding could explain part of the high variability in the amount of secondary metabolites usually found in chemical ecology studies on sponges and opens new biotechnological approaches to enhance the metabolite yield in sponge cultures.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3640394PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/md11020489DOI Listing

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