Marine sponge Hymeniacidon perlevis possesses high diversity Marine sponge Hymeniacidon perlevis possesses high diversity

Abstract

A total of 59 actinobacteria associated with an intertidal marine sponge Hymeniacidon perlevis collected from the Yellow Sea, China were isolated using eight different media. Species diversity and natural product diversity of isolates were analyzed. Twenty-seven isolates were selected on the basis of their morphology on different media, and assigned to the phylum Actinobacteria by a combination of 16S rRNA gene based restriction enzymes digestion and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis (Zhang et al., 2008). The 16S rRNA genes of 27 isolates were digested by restriction enzymes Hha I and assigned to different groups according to their restriction enzyme pattern. The phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing showed that the isolates belong to the genera Streptomyces, Nocardiopsis, Micromonospora, Cellulosimicrobium, Gordonia, Nocardia, Prauseria, Pseudonocardia, Saccharomonospora and Microbacterium. Previous studies have isolated strains of the genera Actinoalloteichus, Micromonospora, Nocardiopsis, Nocardia, Rhodococcus, Pseudonocardia, and Streptomyces from the same marine sponge (Zhang et al., 2006). Together, 12 culturable actinobacteria genera have been isolated and identified from the marine sponge H. perlevis. To our knowledge, this is the first report to recover such a high diversity of culturable actinobacteria from any marine sponges. In addition, this is also the first report of actinobacteria classified as Prauseria sp. and Saccharomonospora azurea that have been isolated from amarine sponge. All of the 27 isolates were screened for genes encoding polyketide synthases (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). PKS-I and PKS-II sequences were detected in more than half of the isolates and the different “PKS-I–PKS-II–NRPS” combinations in different isolates belonging to the same species are indicators of their potential natural product diversity and divergent genetic evolution (Pathom-Aree et al., 2006)