Sources of Secondary Metabolite Variation in Dysidea avara (Porifera: Demospongiae): The Importance of Having Good Neighbors

Abstract

Several studies report temporal, geographical, and intra-individual variation in sponge metabolite yields. However, the internal and/or external factors that regulate the metabolite production remain poorly understood. Dysidea avara is a demosponge that produces sesquiterpenoids (avarol and derivatives) with interesting medical properties, which has prompted addressed studies to obtain enough amounts of these metabolites for research on drug discovery. Within this framework, specimens of Dysidea avara from apopulation of the Northwest Mediterranean were sampled and their secondary metabolites quantified to assess their variability and the possible relationship with external (seasonality, interactions with neighbors) and internal (reproductive stages) factors. The results show a variation of the amount of both avarol and its monoacetate derivative with time, with no clear relationship with seawater temperature. A trade-off with sponge reproduction was not found either. However, our results showed for the first time that sponges are able to increase production or accumulation of secondary metabolites in their peripheral zone depending on the nature of their neighbors. This finding could explain part of the high variability in the amount of secondary metabolites usually found in chemical ecology studies on sponges and opens new biotechnological approaches to enhance the metabolite yield in sponge cultures.

How Environmental Factors Affect the Production of Guanidine Alkaloids by the Mediterranean Sponge Crambe crambe

“…The absence of obvious links between the light intensity, the seawater temperature and the specialized metabolome is consistent with previous studies conducted either in situ [15,20,26,29] or in aquaria [28]. Although no relationship between the nutrient availability and the content of the specialized metabolism was demonstrated, DIN (dissolved inorganic nitrogen) consumption is known to be a key mechanism of nutrient acquisition in temperate sponges [60].…”

Living inside a sponge skeleton: the association of a sponge, a macroalga and a diatom

“…because of the production of deterrent chemical compounds) (Boney 1972;da Cruz et al 2012), or if they could enhance the energetic value of the sponge tissues. Sponges belonging to the genus Dysidea contain several bioactive molecules (Agena et al 2009;De Caralt et al 2013;Huang et al 2008;Venkateswarlu et al 1998), which are often produced by symbiotic cyanobacteria (Becerro and Paul 2004). Studies on these photosynthetic organisms have gained much attention since cyanobacteria have potential applications in biotechnology (Abed et al 2009), while there are no researches on the production of natural products associated with endozoic algae.…”

Four Cytotoxic Spongian Diterpenes from the Sponge <i>Dysidea</i> cf. <i>arenaria</i>

“…17) In the case of Dysidea avara, its surrounding organisms may be related to the production of avarols. 18) In case of the current sponge, we could not recognize any specific macroorganisms around its colonies, indicating that the metabolite variation may be due to other factors. C-NMR spectra were measured on a Bruker Avance III or on a JEOL α-500 spectrometer at 500 MHz or 125 MHz.…”