Immunomodulatory effects of a probiotic combination treatment to improve the survival of Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) larvae against infection by Vibrio coralliilyticus.

Introduction: The culture of Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) is of significant socio-economic importance in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and other temperate regions worldwide, with disease outbreaks acting as significant bottlenecks to the successful production of healthy seed larvae. Therefore, the current study aims to describe the mechanisms of a probiotic combination in improving the survival of C. gigas larvae. Specifically, we investigate changes in C. gigas larval gene expression in response to V. coralliilyticus infection with or without a pre-treatment of a novel probiotic combination. Methods: Treatment groups consisted of replicates of Pacific oyster larvae exposed to a) a combination of four probiotic bacteria at a total concentration of 3.0 x 105 CFU/mL at 18 hours post-fertilization (hpf), b) pathogenic V. coralliilyticus RE22 at a concentration of 6.0 x 103 CFU/mL at 48 hpf, and c) the probiotic combination at 18 hpf and V. coralliilyticus RE22 at 48 hpf. RNA was extracted from washed larvae after 72 hpf, and transcriptome sequencing was used to identify significant differentially expressed genes (DEGs) within each treatment. Results: Larvae challenged with V. coralliilyticus showed enhanced expression of genes responsible for inhibiting immune signaling (i.e., TNFAIP3, PSMD10) and inducing apoptosis (i.e., CDIP53). However, when pre-treated with the probiotic combination, these genes were no longer differentially expressed relative to untreated control larvae. Additionally, pre-treatment with the probiotic combination increased expression of immune signaling proteins and immune effectors (i.e., IL-17, MyD88). Apparent immunomodulation in response to probiotic treatment corresponds to an increase in the survival of C. gigas larvae infected with V. coralliilyticus by up to 82%. Discussion: These results indicate that infection with V. coralliilyticus can suppress the larval immune response while also prompting cell death. Furthermore, the results suggest that the probiotic combination treatment negates the deleterious effects of V. coralliilyticus on larval gene expression while stimulating the expression of genes involved in infection defense mechanisms.

Woronichinia naegeliana: A common nontoxigenic component of temperate freshwater cyanobacterial blooms with 30% of its genome in transposons.

Monitoring in the U.S. state of Washington across the period 2007-2019 showed that Woronichinia has been present in many lakes state-wide. This cyanobacterium was commonly dominant or sub-dominant in cyanobacterial blooms in the wet temperate region west of the Cascade Mountains. In these lakes, Woronichinia often co-existed with Microcystis, Dolichospermum and Aphanizomenon flos-aquae and the cyanotoxin microcystin has often been present in those blooms, although it has not been known whether Woronichinia is a toxin producer. We report the first complete genome of Woronichinia naegeliana WA131, assembled from the metagenome of a sample collected from Wiser Lake, Washington, in 2018. The genome contains no genes for cyanotoxin biosynthesis or taste-and-odor compounds, but there are biosynthetic gene clusters for other bioactive peptides, including anabaenopeptins, cyanopeptolins, microginins and ribosomally produced, post-translationally modified peptides. Genes for photosynthesis, nutrient acquisition, vitamin synthesis and buoyancy that are typical of bloom-forming cyanobacteria are present, although nitrate and nitrite reductase genes are conspicuously absent. However, the 7.9 Mbp genome is 3-4 Mbp larger than those of the above-mentioned frequently co-existing cyanobacteria. The increased genome size is largely due to an extraordinary number of insertion sequence elements (transposons), which account for 30.3% of the genome and many of which are present in multiple copies. The genome contains a relatively large number of pseudogenes, 97% of which are transposase genes. W. naegeliana WA131 thus seems to be able to limit the potentially deleterious effects of high rates of recombination and transposition to the mobilome fraction of its genome.

Genome sequence of freshwater nontoxigenic Limnoraphis associated with microcystin-producing blooms.

A sample from a 2019 cyanobacterial bloom in a freshwater reservoir in eastern Oregon, USA, was used to produce a metagenome from which the complete, circular 7.3 Mbp genome of Limnoraphis sp. WC205 was assembled. The Limnoraphis sp. WC205 genome contains gas vesicle genes, genes for N2-fixation and genes for both phycocyanin- and phycoerythrin-containing phycobilisomes. Limnoraphis was present in Willow Creek Reservoir throughout the summer and fall, coexisting with various other cyanobacteria in blooms that were associated with microcystin. The absence of cyanotoxin genes from the Limnoraphis sp. WC205 genome showed this cyanobacterium to be non-toxigenic, although it is predicted to produce cyanobactins closely related to Microcystis aeruginosa microcyclamides. DNA sequence corresponding to the Microcystis mcyG gene identified Microcystis as the microcystin producer in this lake.

Predictable Changes in Eelgrass Microbiomes with Increasing Wasting Disease Prevalence across 23° Latitude in the Northeastern Pacific.

Predicting outcomes of marine disease outbreaks presents a challenge in the face of both global and local stressors. Host-associated microbiomes may play important roles in disease dynamics but remain understudied in marine ecosystems. Host-pathogen-microbiome interactions can vary across host ranges, gradients of disease, and temperature; studying these relationships may aid our ability to forecast disease dynamics. Eelgrass, Zostera marina, is impacted by outbreaks of wasting disease caused by the opportunistic pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae. We investigated how Z. marina phyllosphere microbial communities vary with rising wasting disease lesion prevalence and severity relative to plant and meadow characteristics like shoot density, longest leaf length, and temperature across 23° latitude in the Northeastern Pacific. We detected effects of geography (11%) and smaller, but distinct, effects of temperature (30-day max sea surface temperature, 4%) and disease (lesion prevalence, 3%) on microbiome composition. Declines in alpha diversity on asymptomatic tissue occurred with rising wasting disease prevalence within meadows. However, no change in microbiome variability (dispersion) was detected between asymptomatic and symptomatic tissues. Further, we identified members of Cellvibrionaceae, Colwelliaceae, and Granulosicoccaceae on asymptomatic tissue that are predictive of wasting disease prevalence across the geographic range (3,100 kilometers). Functional roles of Colwelliaceae and Granulosicoccaceae are not known. Cellvibrionaceae, degraders of plant cellulose, were also enriched in lesions and adjacent green tissue relative to nonlesioned leaves. Cellvibrionaceae may play important roles in disease progression by degrading host tissues or overwhelming plant immune responses. Thus, inclusion of microbiomes in wasting disease studies may improve our ability to understand variable rates of infection, disease progression, and plant survival. IMPORTANCE The roles of marine microbiomes in disease remain poorly understood due, in part, to the challenging nature of sampling at appropriate spatiotemporal scales and across natural gradients of disease throughout host ranges. This is especially true for marine vascular plants like eelgrass (Zostera marina) that are vital for ecosystem function and biodiversity but are susceptible to rapid decline and die-off from pathogens like eukaryotic slime-mold Labyrinthula zosterae (wasting disease). We link bacterial members of phyllosphere tissues to the prevalence of wasting disease across the broadest geographic range to date for a marine plant microbiome-disease study (3,100 km). We identify Cellvibrionaceae, plant cell wall degraders, enriched (up to 61% relative abundance) within lesion tissue, which suggests this group may be playing important roles in disease progression. These findings suggest inclusion of microbiomes in marine disease studies will improve our ability to predict ecological outcomes of infection across variable landscapes spanning thousands of kilometers.

Islet autoantibody seroconversion in type-1 diabetes is associated with metagenome-assembled genomes in infant gut microbiomes.

The immune system of some genetically susceptible children can be triggered by certain environmental factors to produce islet autoantibodies (IA) against pancreatic ß cells, which greatly increases their risk for Type-1 diabetes. An environmental factor under active investigation is the gut microbiome due to its important role in immune system education. Here, we study gut metagenomes that are de-novo-assembled in 887 at-risk children in the Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) project. Our results reveal a small set of core protein families, present in >50% of the subjects, which account for 64% of the sequencing reads. Time-series binning generates 21,536 high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from 883 species, including 176 species that hitherto have no MAG representation in previous comprehensive human microbiome surveys. IA seroconversion is positively associated with 2373 MAGs and negatively with 1549 MAGs. Comparative genomics analysis identifies lipopolysaccharides biosynthesis in Bacteroides MAGs and sulfate reduction in Anaerostipes MAGs as functional signatures of MAGs with positive IA-association. The functional signatures in the MAGs with negative IA-association include carbohydrate degradation in lactic acid bacteria MAGs and nitrate reduction in Escherichia MAGs. Overall, our results show a distinct set of gut microorganisms associated with IA seroconversion and uncovered the functional genomics signatures of these IA-associated microorganisms.

7-epi-cylindrospermopsin and microcystin producers among diverse Anabaena/Dolichospermum/Aphanizomenon CyanoHABs in Oregon, USA.

Several genomes of Nostocales ADA clade members from the US Pacific Northwest were recently sequenced. Biosynthetic genes for microcystin, cylindrospermopsin or anatoxin-a were present in 7 of the 15 Dolichospermum/Anabaena strains and none of the 5 Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) strains. Toxin analyses (ELISA and LC-MS/MS) were conducted to quantitate and identify microcystin (MC) and cylindrospermopsin (CYN) congeners/analogs in samples dominated by Dolichospermum spp. of known genome sequence. MC-LR was the main congener produced by Dolichospermum spp. from Junipers Reservoir, Lake Billy Chinook and Odell Lake, while a congener provisionally identified as [Dha7]MC-HtyR was produced by a Dolichospermum sp. in Detroit Reservoir. A second Dolichospermum sp. from Detroit Reservoir was found to produce 7-epi-CYN, with 7-deoxy-CYN also present, but no CYN. The monitoring history of each of these lakes indicates the capacity for high levels of cyanotoxins during periods when Dolichospermum spp. are the dominant cyanobacteria. The diversity of ADA strains found in the US Pacific NW emphasizes the importance of these cyanobacteria as potentially toxic HAB formers in this temperate climatic region. Our results linking congener and genetic identity add data points that will help guide development of improved tools for predicting congener specificity from cyanotoxin gene sequences.

Revealing General Patterns of Microbiomes That Transcend Systems: Potential and Challenges of Deep Transfer Learning.

A growing body of research has established that the microbiome can mediate the dynamics and functional capacities of diverse biological systems. Yet, we understand little about what governs the response of these microbial communities to host or environmental changes. Most efforts to model microbiomes focus on defining the relationships between the microbiome, host, and environmental features within a specified study system and therefore fail to capture those that may be evident across multiple systems. In parallel with these developments in microbiome research, computer scientists have developed a variety of machine learning tools that can identify subtle, but informative, patterns from complex data. Here, we recommend using deep transfer learning to resolve microbiome patterns that transcend study systems. By leveraging diverse public data sets in an unsupervised way, such models can learn contextual relationships between features and build on those patterns to perform subsequent tasks (e.g., classification) within specific biological contexts.

Phytoplankton exudates and lysates support distinct microbial consortia with specialized metabolic and ecophysiological traits.

Blooms of marine phytoplankton fix complex pools of dissolved organic matter (DOM) that are thought to be partitioned among hundreds of heterotrophic microbes at the base of the food web. While the relationship between microbial consumers and phytoplankton DOM is a key component of marine carbon cycling, microbial loop metabolism is largely understood from model organisms and substrates. Here, we took an untargeted approach to measure and analyze partitioning of four distinct phytoplankton-derived DOM pools among heterotrophic populations in a natural microbial community using a combination of ecogenomics, stable isotope probing (SIP), and proteomics. Each 13C-labeled exudate or lysate from a diatom or a picocyanobacterium was preferentially assimilated by different heterotrophic taxa with specialized metabolic and physiological adaptations. Bacteroidetes populations, with their unique high-molecular-weight transporters, were superior competitors for DOM derived from diatom cell lysis, rapidly increasing growth rates and ribosomal protein expression to produce new relatively high C:N biomass. Proteobacteria responses varied, with relatively low levels of assimilation by Gammaproteobacteria populations, while copiotrophic Alphaproteobacteria such as the Roseobacter clade, with their diverse array of ABC- and TRAP-type transporters to scavenge monomers and nitrogen-rich metabolites, accounted for nearly all cyanobacteria exudate assimilation and produced new relatively low C:N biomass. Carbon assimilation rates calculated from SIP data show that exudate and lysate from two common marine phytoplankton are being used by taxonomically distinct sets of heterotrophic populations with unique metabolic adaptations, providing a deeper mechanistic understanding of consumer succession and carbon use during marine bloom events.

Complete genomes derived by directly sequencing freshwater bloom populations emphasize the significance of the genus level ADA clade within the Nostocales.

The genome sequences of 16 Nostocales cyanobacteria have been determined. Most of them are complete or near-complete genome sequences derived by long-read metagenome sequencing of recent harmful algal blooms (HABs) in freshwater lakes without the potential bias of culture isolation. The genomes are all members of the recently recognized ADA clade (Driscoll et al., Harmful Algae, 77:93, 2018), which we argue represents a genus. We identify 10 putative species-level branches within the clade, on the basis of 91-gene phylogenomic and average nucleotide identity analyses. The assembled genomes each correspond to a single morphotype in the original sample, but distinct genomes from different HABs in some cases correspond to similar morphotypes. We present data indicating that the ADA clade is a highly significant component of current cyanobacterial HABs, including members assigned to the prevalent Dolichospermum and Aphanizomenon genera, as well as Cuspidothrix and Anabaena. In general, currently used genus and species names within the ADA clade are not monophyletic. We infer that the morphological characters routinely used in taxonomic assignments are not reliable for discriminating species within the ADA clade. Taxonomic revisions will be needed to create a genus with a single name (we recommend Anabaena) and to adopt species names that do not depend on morphological traits that lack sufficient discrimination and specificity, while recognizing the utility of some easily observable and distinct morphologies.

Comparative genomics of the ADA clade within the Nostocales.

The ADA clade of Nostocales cyanobacteria, a group that is prominent in current harmful algal bloom events, now includes over 40 genome sequences with the recent addition of sixteen novel sequenced genomes (Dreher et al., Harmful Algae, 2021). Fourteen genomes are complete (closed), enabling highly detailed assessments of gene content and genome architecture. ADA genomes contain 5 rRNA operons, genes expected to support a photoautotrophic and diazotrophic lifestyle, and a varied array of genes for the synthesis of bioactive secondary metabolites. Genes for the production of the taste-and-odor compound geosmin and the four major classes of cyanotoxins - anatoxin-a, cylindrospermopsin, microcystin and saxitoxin - are represented in members of the ADA clade. Notably, the gene array for the synthesis of cylindrospermopsin by Dolichospermum sp. DET69 was located on a plasmid, raising the possibility of facile horizontal transmission. However, genes supporting independent conjugative transfer of this plasmid are lacking. Further, analysis of genomic loci containing this and other cyanotoxin gene arrays shows evidence that these arrays have long-term stability and do not appear to be genomic islands easily capable of horizontal transmission to other cells. There is considerable diversity in the gene complements of individual ADA genomes, including the variable presence of physiologically important genes: genomes in three species-level subclades lack the gas vesicle genes that facilitate a planktonic lifestyle, and, surprisingly, the genome of Cuspidothrix issatschenkoi CHARLIE-1, a reported diazotroph, lacks the genes for nitrogen fixation. Notably, phylogenetically related genomes possess limited synteny, indicating a prominent role for chromosome rearrangements during ADA strain evolution. The genomes contain abundant insertion sequences and repetitive transposase genes, which could be the main drivers of genome rearrangement through active transposition and homologous recombination. No prophages were found, and no evidence of viral infection was observed in the bloom population samples from which the genomes discussed here were derived. Phages thus seem to have a limited influence on ADA evolution.

Recovery and Community Succession of the Zostera marina Rhizobiome after Transplantation.

Seagrasses can form mutualisms with their microbiomes that facilitate the exchange of energy sources, nutrients, and hormones and ultimately impact plant stress resistance. Little is known about community succession within the belowground seagrass microbiome after disturbance and its potential role in the plant's recovery after transplantation. We transplanted Zostera marina shoots with and without an intact rhizosphere and cultivated plants for 4 weeks while characterizing microbiome recovery and effects on plant traits. Rhizosphere and root microbiomes were compositionally distinct, likely representing discrete microbial niches. Furthermore, microbiomes of washed transplants were initially different from those of sod transplants and recovered to resemble an undisturbed state within 14 days. Conspicuously, changes in the microbial communities of washed transplants corresponded with changes in the rhizosphere sediment mass and root biomass, highlighting the strength and responsive nature of the relationship between plants, their microbiome, and the environment. Potential mutualistic microbes that were enriched over time include those that function in the cycling and turnover of sulfur, nitrogen, and plant-derived carbon in the rhizosphere environment. These findings highlight the importance and resilience of the seagrass microbiome after disturbance. Consideration of the microbiome will have meaningful implications for habitat restoration practices.IMPORTANCE Seagrasses are important coastal species that are declining globally, and transplantation can be used to combat these declines. However, the bacterial communities associated with seagrass rhizospheres and roots (the microbiome) are often disturbed or removed completely prior to transplantation. The seagrass microbiome benefits seagrasses through metabolite, nutrient, and phytohormone exchange and contributes to the ecosystem services of seagrass meadows by cycling sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon. This experiment aimed to characterize the importance and resilience of the seagrass belowground microbiome by transplanting Zostera marina with and without intact rhizospheres and tracking microbiome and plant morphological recovery over 4 weeks. We found the seagrass microbiome to be resilient to transplantation disturbance, recovering after 14 days. Additionally, microbiome recovery was linked with seagrass morphology, coinciding with increases in the rhizosphere sediment mass and root biomass. The results of this study can be used to include microbiome responses in informing future restoration work.

Comparative genomic analysis of Vibrios yields insights into genes associated with virulence towards C. gigas larvae.

BACKGROUND: Vibriosis has been implicated in major losses of larvae at shellfish hatcheries. However, the species of Vibrio responsible for disease in aquaculture settings and their associated virulence genes are often variable or undefined. Knowledge of the specific nature of these factors is essential to developing a better understanding of the environmental and biological conditions that lead to larvae mortality events in hatcheries. We tested the virulence of 51 Vibrio strains towards Pacific Oyster (Crassostreae gigas) larvae and sequenced draft genomes of 42 hatchery-associated vibrios to determine groups of orthologous genes associated with virulence and to determine the phylogenetic relationships among pathogens and non-pathogens of C. gigas larvae. RESULTS: V. coralliilyticus strains were the most prevalent pathogenic isolates. A phylogenetic logistic regression model identified over 500 protein-coding genes correlated with pathogenicity. Many of these genes had straightforward links to disease mechanisms, including predicted hemolysins, proteases, and multiple Type 3 Secretion System genes, while others appear to have possible indirect roles in pathogenesis and may be more important for general survival in the host environment. Multiple metabolism and nutrient acquisition genes were also identified to correlate with pathogenicity, highlighting specific features that may enable pathogen survival within C. gigas larvae. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications on the range of pathogenic Vibrio spp. found in oyster-rearing environments and the genetic determinants of virulence in these populations.

Nutrient enrichment increases size of Zostera marina shoots and enriches for sulfur and nitrogen cycling bacteria in root-associated microbiomes.

Seagrasses are vital coastal ecosystem engineers, which are mutualistically associated with microbial communities that contribute to the ecosystem services provided by meadows. The seagrass microbiome and sediment microbiota play vital roles in belowground biogeochemical and carbon cycling. These activities are influenced by nutrient, carbon and oxygen availability, all of which are modulated by environmental factors and plant physiology. Seagrass meadows are increasingly threatened by nutrient pollution, and it is unknown how the seagrass microbiome will respond to this stressor. We investigated the effects of fertilization on the physiology, morphology and microbiome of eelgrass (Zostera marina) cultivated over 4 weeks in mesocosms. We analyzed the community structure associated with eelgrass leaf, root and rhizosphere microbiomes, and of communities from water column and bulk sediment using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Fertilization led to a higher number of leaves compared with that of eelgrass kept under ambient conditions. Additionally, fertilization led to enrichment of sulfur and nitrogen bacteria in belowground communities. These results suggest nutrient enrichment can stimulate belowground biogeochemical cycling, potentially exacerbating sulfide toxicity in sediments and decreasing future carbon sequestration stocks.

Distributions of Extracellular Peptidases Across Prokaryotic Genomes Reflect Phylogeny and Habitat.

Proteinaceous compounds are abundant forms of organic nitrogen in soil and aquatic ecosystems, and the rate of protein depolymerization, which is accomplished by a diverse range of microbial secreted peptidases, often limits nitrogen turnover in the environment. To determine if the distribution of secreted peptidases reflects the ecological and evolutionary histories of different taxa, we analyzed their distribution across prokaryotic lineages. Peptidase gene sequences of 147 archaeal and 2,191 bacterial genomes from the MEROPS database were screened for secretion signals, resulting in 55,072 secreted peptidases belonging to 148 peptidase families. These data, along with their corresponding 16S rRNA sequences, were used in our analysis. Overall, Bacteria had a much wider collection of secreted peptidases, higher average numbers of secreted peptidases per genome, and more unique peptidase families than Archaea. We found that the distribution of secreted peptidases corresponded to phylogenetic relationships among Bacteria and Archaea and often segregated according to microbial lifestyles, suggesting that the secreted peptidase complements of microbial taxa are optimized for the environmental microhabitats they occupy. Our analyses provide the groundwork for examining the specific functional role of families of secreted peptidases in relationship to the organisms and the corresponding environments in which they function.

Anabaena/Dolichospermum as the source of lethal microcystin levels responsible for a large cattle toxicosis event.

Thirty-two 14-month old steers died during a period of four days (19-23 June 2017) after drinking from Junipers Reservoir (southeastern Oregon, USA) during a cyanobacterial bloom. Clinical and histopathological findings were consistent with acute liver disease, and microcystin-LR was present at 3000 µg/L in a reservoir water sample and at 7100 µg/L in the rumen contents of one of the mortalities. Serum biochemistry and histological examination indicated severe liver damage consistent with microcystin toxicosis. Microscopic observation of reservoir water samples, limited to frozen or poorly stored and partially degraded samples, indicated the presence of abundant Anabaena/Dolichospermum, but the presence of other toxic cyanobacteria such as Microcystis could not be excluded. Metagenomic analysis showed the presence in these samples of a single cyanobacterium whose cpcBA, rpoB and rbcL genes indicated membership in the Anabaena/Dolichospermum genus. The sequence of a complete mcy gene cluster with homology to previously identified Anabaena mcy genes was recovered. These results emphasize the capacity for Anabaena/Dolichospermum blooms to produce lethal levels of microcystin, posing a danger to public health and livestock. Further, our findings indicate that such occurrences can occur outside the far-northern latitudes in which microcystin-producing Anabaena have typically been found.

Microbial Community Structure-Function Relationships in Yaquina Bay Estuary Reveal Spatially Distinct Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling Capacities.

Linking microbial community structure to ecological processes requires understanding of the functional roles among individual populations and the factors that influence their distributions. These structure-function relationships are particularly difficult to disentangle in estuaries, due to highly variable physico-chemical conditions. Yet, examining microbe-mediated turnover of resources in these "bioreactor" ecosystems is critical for understanding estuarine ecology. In this study, a combined metagenomics and metaproteomics approach was used to show that the unequal distribution of microbial populations across the Yaquina Bay estuary led to a habitat-specific taxonomic and functional structure and a clear spatial distribution in microbe-mediated capacities for cycling of carbon and nitrogen. For example, size-fractionation revealed that communities inhabiting suspended particulate material encoded more diverse types of metabolisms (e.g., fermentation and denitrification) than those with a planktonic lifestyle, suggesting that the metabolic reactions can differ between size fractions of the same parcel of an estuarine water column. Similarly, communities inhabiting oligotrophic conditions in the lower estuary were enriched in genes involved in central carbon metabolism (e.g., TCA cycle), while communities in the upper estuary were enriched in genes typical of copiotrophic populations (e.g., cell growth, cell division). Integrating gene and protein data revealed that abundant populations of Flavobacteriales and Rhodobacterales encoded similar genomic functions, yet differed significantly in protein expression, dedicating a large proportion of their respective proteomes to rapid growth and division versus metabolic versatility and resource acquisition. This suggested potentially distinct life-strategies between these two co-occurring lineages and was concomitant with differing patterns of positive evolutionary selection on their encoded genes. Microbial communities and their functions across Yaquina Bay appear to be structured by population-level habitat preferences, resulting in spatially distinct elemental cycling, while within each community, forces such as competitive exclusion and evolutionary selection influence species life-strategies and may help maintain microbial diversity.

Metatranscriptomics and Amplicon Sequencing Reveal Mutualisms in Seagrass Microbiomes.

Terrestrial plants benefit from many well-understood mutualistic relationships with root- and leaf-associated microbiomes, but relatively little is known about these relationships for seagrass and other aquatic plants. We used 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and metatranscriptomics to assess potential mutualisms between microorganisms and the seagrasses Zostera marina and Zostera japonica collected from mixed beds in Netarts Bay, OR, United States. The phylogenetic composition of leaf-, root-, and water column-associated bacterial communities were strikingly different, but these communities were not significantly different between plant species. Many taxa present on leaves were related to organisms capable of consuming the common plant metabolic waste product methanol, and of producing agarases, which can limit the growth of epiphytic algae. Taxa present on roots were related to organisms capable of oxidizing toxic sulfur compounds and of fixing nitrogen. Metatranscriptomic sequencing identified expression of genes involved in all of these microbial metabolic processes at levels greater than typical water column bacterioplankton, and also identified expression of genes involved in denitrification and in bacterial synthesis of the plant growth hormone indole-3-acetate. These results provide the first evidence using metatranscriptomics that seagrass microbiomes carry out a broad range of functions that may benefit their hosts, and imply that microbe-plant mutualisms support the health and growth of aquatic plants.

Sipros Ensemble improves database searching and filtering for complex metaproteomics.

Motivation: Complex microbial communities can be characterized by metagenomics and metaproteomics. However, metagenome assemblies often generate enormous, and yet incomplete, protein databases, which undermines the identification of peptides and proteins in metaproteomics. This challenge calls for increased discrimination of true identifications from false identifications by database searching and filtering algorithms in metaproteomics. Results: Sipros Ensemble was developed here for metaproteomics using an ensemble approach. Three diverse scoring functions from MyriMatch, Comet and the original Sipros were incorporated within a single database searching engine. Supervised classification with logistic regression was used to filter database searching results. Benchmarking with soil and marine microbial communities demonstrated a higher number of peptide and protein identifications by Sipros Ensemble than MyriMatch/Percolator, Comet/Percolator, MS-GF+/Percolator, Comet & MyriMatch/iProphet and Comet & MyriMatch & MS-GF+/iProphet. Sipros Ensemble was computationally efficient and scalable on supercomputers. Availability and implementation: Freely available under the GNU GPL license at http://sipros.omicsbio.org. Contact: cpan@utk.edu. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Three Draft Genome Sequences of Vibrio coralliilyticus Strains Isolated from Bivalve Hatcheries.

Reported here are the genome sequences of three Vibrio coralliilyticus isolates RE87, AIC-7, and 080116A. Each strain was isolated in association with oyster larvae in commercial aquaculture systems. These draft genomes will be useful for further studies in understanding the genomic features contributing to V. coralliilyticus pathogenicity.

Phylogenetically conserved resource partitioning in the coastal microbial loop.

Resource availability influences marine microbial community structure, suggesting that population-specific resource partitioning defines discrete niches. Identifying how resources are partitioned among populations, thereby characterizing functional guilds within the communities, remains a challenge for microbial ecologists. We used proteomic stable isotope probing (SIP) and NanoSIMS analysis of phylogenetic microarrays (Chip-SIP) along with 16S rRNA gene amplicon and metagenomic sequencing to characterize the assimilation of six 13C-labeled common metabolic substrates and changes in the microbial community structure within surface water collected from Monterey Bay, CA. Both sequencing approaches indicated distinct substrate-specific community shifts. However, observed changes in relative abundance for individual populations did not correlate well with directly measured substrate assimilation. The complementary SIP techniques identified assimilation of all six substrates by diverse taxa, but also revealed differential assimilation of substrates into protein and ribonucleotide biomass between taxa. Substrate assimilation trends indicated significantly conserved resource partitioning among populations within the Flavobacteriia, Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria classes, suggesting that functional guilds within marine microbial communities are phylogenetically cohesive. However, populations within these classes exhibited heterogeneity in biosynthetic activity, which distinguished high-activity copiotrophs from low-activity oligotrophs. These results indicate distinct growth responses between populations that is not apparent by genome sequencing alone.