Comparative Genomics Provides Insight into the Function of Broad-Host Range Sponge Symbionts
Open Access
- 14 September 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Society for Microbiology in mBio
- Vol. 12 (5), e0157721
- https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.01577-21
Abstract
The fossil record indicates that the earliest evidence of extant marine sponges (phylum Porifera) existed during the Cambrian explosion and that their symbiosis with microbes may have begun in their extinct ancestors during the Precambrian period. Many symbionts have adapted to their sponge host, where they perform specific, specialized functions. There are also widely distributed bacterial taxa such as Poribacteria, SAUL, and Tethybacterales that are found in a broad range of invertebrate hosts. Here, we added 11 new genomes to the Tethybacterales order, identified a novel family, and show that functional potential differs between the three Tethybacterales families. We compare the Tethybacterales with the well-characterized Entoporibacteria and show that these symbionts appear to preferentially associate with low-microbial abundance (LMA) and high-microbial abundance (HMA) sponges, respectively. Within these sponges, we show that these symbionts likely perform distinct functions and may have undergone multiple association events, rather than a single association event followed by coevolution. IMPORTANCE Marine sponges often form symbiotic relationships with bacteria that fulfil a specific need within the sponge holobiont, and these symbionts are often conserved within a narrow range of related taxa. To date, there exist only three known bacterial taxa (Entoporibacteria, SAUL, and Tethybacterales) that are globally distributed and found in a broad range of sponge hosts, and little is known about the latter two. We show that the functional potential of broad-host range symbionts is conserved at a family level and that these symbionts have been acquired several times over evolutionary history. Finally, it appears that the Entoporibacteria are associated primarily with high-microbial abundance sponges, while the Tethybacterales associate with low-microbial abundance sponges.Funding Information
- National Research Foundation (87583)
- National Research Foundation (97967)
- National Research Foundation (110612)
- National Research Foundation (101038)
This publication has 124 references indexed in Scilit:
- Functional equivalence and evolutionary convergence in complex communities of microbial sponge symbiontsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012
- SPAdes: A New Genome Assembly Algorithm and Its Applications to Single-Cell SequencingJournal of Computational Biology, 2012
- ENDOSYMBIOTIC CALCIFYING BACTERIA: A NEW CUE TO THE ORIGIN OF CALCIFICATION IN METAZOA?Evolution, 2012
- Single-cell genomics reveals the lifestyle of Poribacteria, a candidate phylum symbiotically associated with marine spongesThe ISME Journal, 2010
- Functional diversity of ankyrin repeats in microbial proteinsTrends in Microbiology, 2010
- Legumes regulate Rhizobium bacteroid development and persistence by the supply of branched-chain amino acidsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- NCBI BLAST: a better web interfaceNucleic Acids Research, 2008
- PAL2NAL: robust conversion of protein sequence alignments into the corresponding codon alignmentsNucleic Acids Research, 2006
- MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughputNucleic Acids Research, 2004
- VEGAN, a package of R functions for community ecologyJournal of Vegetation Science, 2003