Project description:This dataset contains several sponge-derived bacteria, along with data from the sponges to enable the assignation of the biosynthetic source of detected metabolite features. Media controls and solvent blanks are also included. Please see metadata for the bacterial source sponge.
Project description:Sponges have complex relationships with bacteria, the roles of which include food, important components of the holobiont, pathogens, and accidentally accumulated elements of the environment. Consequently, sponges are reservoirs of microbial genomes and novel compounds. Therefore, we isolated and sequenced the whole genomes of bacterial species from the calcareous sponge Sycon capricorn.
Project description:To investigate the activity of sponge enhancers in vertebrates transgenic experiments was performed where sponge enhancers were inserted into zebrafish embryos and stable lines generated abstract: Transcription factors (TFs) bind DNA enhancer sequences to regulate gene transcription in animals. Unlike TFs, the evolution of enhancers has been difficult to trace because of their fast evolution. Here, we take enhancers in the sponge Amphimedon queenslandica and test their activity in zebrafish and mouse. Of the five sponge enhancers assessed, three were located in conserved syntenic gene regions that are unique to animals (Islet–Scaper, Ccne1–Uri, Tdrd3–Diaph3). Despite diverging over 700 million years ago and a dearth of sequence identity, sponge enhancers are able to drive cell type-specific reporter gene expression in vertebrates. Analysis of the type and frequency of TF binding motifs in the sponge Islet enhancer allowed for the identification of homologous enhancers in human and mouse, which show remarkably similar reporter expression patterns to the sponge enhancer. These findings uncover an unexpected deep conservation of enhancers and suggest that enhancers established early in metazoan evolution can remain functional through retention of combinations of transcription factor binding motifs despite substantial sequence divergence.
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.