Steroids are abundant growth substrates for bacteria in natural, engineered, and host-associated environments. This study analyzed the distribution of the aerobic 9,10-seco steroid degradation pathway in 346 publically available metagenomes from diverse environments. Our results show that steroid-degrading bacteria are globally distributed and prevalent in particular environments, such as waste...

Sponges, which constitute the phylum Porifera, are the most primitive of the multicellular animals, among all marine organisms screened. Marine sponges produce the largest number of structurally diversified natural products. In this study we investigated in vitro antimicrobial activity of Ircinia mutans collected from the Kish Island in the Persian Gulf against strains of bacteria Escherichia c...

Ianthella basta marine sponges in Kimbe Bay, west New Britain, Papua New Guinea were affected by a disease, and exhibited high mortality, between 1996 and 2000. These fan-shaped sponges were mottled with brown lesions, rotted tissue and large holes. The decayed tissue was surrounded by brown biofilm that smothered the ostia openings. Since 1996, I. basta suffered its highest mortality at 3 site...

The growth inhibition of 12 native marine bacteria isolated from Aplysina sponge surfaces, the shell of a bivalve, and Phytagel immersed for 48 h in sea water were used as indicator of the antifouling activity of the extracts of 39 marine organisms (octocorals, sponges, algae, and zoanthid) collected in the Colombian Caribbean Sea and on the Brazilian coast (Santa Catarina). Gram-negative bacte...

BACKGROUND The marine sponge Tethya wilhelma and the freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri are emerging model organisms to study evolution, gene regulation, development, and physiology in non-bilaterian animal systems. Thus far, functional methods (i.e., loss or gain of function) for these organisms have not been available. RESULTS We show that soaking developing freshwater sponges in double-s...

Enzymes play key roles in different cellular processes, for example, in signal transduction, cell differentiation and proliferation, metabolic processes, DNA damage repair, apoptosis, and response to stress. A deregulation of enzymes has been considered one of the first causes of several diseases, including cancers. In the last several years, enzyme inhibitors, being good candidates as drugs in...

Secondary metabolites of the marine sponges Acanthella elongata, Axinella donnani, Callyspongia diffusa, Callyspongia subarmigera, and Echinodictyum gorgonoides were collected from fishing nets and their in vitro antibacterial properties against eight virulent marine fish pathogens were studied at incubation temperatures of 20°C and 30°C. Crude methanol extracts of the tested sponges showed spe...

Microbes associated with marine sponges play significant roles in host physiology. Remarkable levels of microbial diversity have been observed in sponges worldwide through both culture-dependent and culture-independent studies. Most studies have focused on the structure of the bacterial communities in sponges and have involved sponges sampled from shallow waters. Here, we used pyrosequencing of...

Sponges represent one of the most diverse benthic faunal groups in subtidal habitats of Caribbean coral reefs and mangroves. On coral reefs, sponges (100-261 species) surpass the species richness of other conspicuous reef organisms, such as octocorals (60-80 species) and scleractinian corals (50-60 species). In the past 35 years, researchers supported by the Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems prog...

Citation: Egan S and Thomas T (2015) Editorial for: Microbial symbiosis of marine sessile hosts-diversity and function. The marine surface environment is home to a large and often diverse community of microorganisms. Yet compared to terrestrial ecosystems we still know little about the diversity, degree of host-specificity, functional role or the molecular mechanisms of host-microbe interaction...