Publication Date:
2022-08-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2021. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Society for Applied Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Becker, C. C., Brandt, M., Miller, C. A., & Apprill, A. Microbial bioindicators of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease identified in corals and overlying waters using a rapid field-based sequencing approach. Environmental Microbiology, (2021), https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.15718.
Description:
Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) is a devastating disease. Since 2014, it has spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract and into the greater Caribbean. It was first detected in the United States Virgin Islands in January 2019. To more quickly identify microbial bioindicators of disease, we developed a rapid pipeline for microbiome sequencing. Over a span of 10 days we collected, processed and sequenced coral and near-coral seawater microbiomes from diseased and apparently healthy Colpophyllia natans, Montastraea cavernosa, Meandrina meandrites and Orbicella franksi. Analysis of bacterial and archaeal 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences revealed 25 bioindicator amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) enriched in diseased corals. These bioindicator ASVs were additionally recovered in near-coral seawater (〈5 cm of coral surface), a potential reservoir for pathogens. Phylogenetic analysis of microbial bioindicators with sequences from the Coral Microbiome Database revealed that Vibrio, Arcobacter, Rhizobiaceae and Rhodobacteraceae sequences were related to disease-associated coral bacteria and lineages novel to corals. Additionally, four ASVs (Algicola, Cohaesibacter, Thalassobius and Vibrio) were matches to microbes previously associated with SCTLD that should be targets for future research. Overall, this work suggests that a rapid sequencing framework paired with specialized databases facilitates identification of microbial disease bioindicators.
Description:
This work was funded by The Tiffany & Co. Foundation, NSF EEID-2109622, OCE-1928753, OCE-1928761 and OCE-1938147, the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Dalio Foundation, and other generous donors of the Oceans 5 project. Samples were collected under permit DFW19057U.
Description:
2022-08-25
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
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