1. Polyketide synthase gene diversity within the microbiome of the sponge Arenosclera brasiliensis, endemic to the Southern Atlantic Ocean.
- Author
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Trindade-Silva AE, Rua CP, Andrade BG, Vicente AC, Silva GG, Berlinck RG, and Thompson FL
- Subjects
- Animals, Atlantic Ocean, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing, Molecular Sequence Data, Phylogeny, Genetic Variation, Metagenome, Polyketide Synthases genetics, Porifera microbiology
- Abstract
Microbes associated with marine sponges are considered important producers of bioactive, structurally unique polyketides. The synthesis of such secondary metabolites involves type I polyketide synthases (PKSs), which are enzymes that reach a maximum complexity degree in bacteria. The Haplosclerida sponge Arenosclera brasiliensis hosts a complex microbiota and is the source of arenosclerins, alkaloids with cytotoxic and antibacterial activity. In the present investigation, we performed high-throughput sequencing of the ketosynthase (KS) amplicon to investigate the diversity of PKS genes present in the metagenome of A. brasiliensis. Almost 4,000 ketosynthase reads were recovered, with about 90% annotated automatically as bacterial. A total of 235 bacterial KS contigs was rigorously assembled from this sequence pool and submitted to phylogenetic analysis. A great diversity of six type I PKS groups has been consistently detected in our phylogenetic reconstructions, including a novel and A. brasiliensis-exclusive group. Our study is the first to reveal the diversity of type I PKS genes in A. brasiliensis as well as the potential of its microbiome to serve as a source of new polyketides.
- Published
- 2013
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