A marine bacterium, strain Pol012T, was isolated from the Mediterranean sponge Axinella polypoides and subsequently characterized as belonging to subphylum 1 of the phylum ‘Verrucomicrobia’. Strain Pol012T was non-motile, Gram-negative, coccoid or rod-shaped and red in colour. The menaquinones MK-8 and MK-9 were detected. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 50.9 mol%. Growth was possible at temperatures between 8 and 30 °C and at pH values between 6.8 and 8.2. The closest cultured relative of strain Pol012T was Akkermansia muciniphila (83 % sequence similarity), while the closest environmental 16S rRNA gene sequence was the marine clone Arctic96BD-2 (95 % sequence similarity). Strain Pol012T is the first marine pure-culture representative of ‘Verrucomicrobia’ subphylum 1 and represents a novel genus and species, for which the name Rubritalea marina gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is Pol012T (=DSM 177716T=CIP 108984T).
Until now, direct, non-invasive i n vivo studies on water and metabolite distribution in living sponges have not been possible. Here we apply for the first time the noninvasive technique of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) irnaging to determine the spatial distribution of water in the marine sponge Subentes domuncula. After transfer of the sponge into deuterated water (D20) for a short incubation period of 18 rnin, no significant water exchange was observed, nelther In S. domuncula nor in the hermit crab livlng in symbiosis with it, suggesting D 2 0 to be an ideal contrast enhancing agent for NMR imaging of sponges. Thus, NMR imaging provides a promising technique for the detection (and possibly quantdication) of the distribution and transport of water both by diffusion and active transport in a living sponge.
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