• Bacteria on intertidal rockweed across t

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Friday, March 11, 2022 21:30:42
    Bacteria on intertidal rockweed across the North Atlantic

    Date:
    March 11, 2022
    Source:
    University of Maine
    Summary:
    Algae such as rockweeds are a fundamental part of marine ecosystems,
    providing habitat and food to many other marine organisms while
    also providing ecosystem services like oxygenation of the water. In
    turn, algae depend on bacteria to maintain their normal shapes and
    health. New sequencing methods are illuminating the relationships
    between marine bacteria and marine algae, as demonstrated
    in research by 15 scientists from countries across the North
    Atlantic. The published study contributes to the understanding
    how sensitive important algae are to the changing environment.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Algae such as rockweeds are a fundamental part of marine ecosystems,
    providing habitat and food to many other marine organisms while also
    providing ecosystem services. Algae produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, so oxygenation of the water and atmosphere is one such ecosystem service. In turn, algae depend on bacteria to maintain their
    normal shapes and health.


    ==========================================================================
    New sequencing methods are illuminating the relationships between marine bacteria and marine algae, as demonstrated in research by 15 scientists
    from countries across the North Atlantic.

    Principal investigators Susan Brawley, a professor at the UMaine School
    of Marine Sciences, and Hilary Morrison, a senior scientist at the
    Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, led a team of researchers in a sweeping study funded by the National Science Foundation
    (NSF) of the bacteria associated with the foundational intertidal rockweed Fucus vesiculosus.The results were published in the Journal of Phycology.

    The researchers found that the bacterial communities on this brown alga
    were similar between eastern and western shores of the North Atlantic
    at similar latitudes, but varied along a north to south gradient across
    the host biogeographic range -- Greenland to North Carolina on western
    shores, and Norway to Spain in the eastern Atlantic. The researchers also observed the disappearance of the alga from areas of the North Carolina
    coast where it had long been abundant, emphasizing the pressing need
    to understand the bacterial- host interactions and particular bacterial communities associated with the host alga in southern regions experiencing
    host retreat as marine ecosystems are altered by climate change.

    "Our research showed that the structure of bacterial communities on
    this rockweed depends upon both current and past environments, including
    the changing biogeographic ranges of Fucus vesiculosus related to past
    glacial cycles," says Brawley. "Some of these bacteria are vital to Fucus algae. By searching for ones that are common across algal tissues over
    this large study with 16 field sites across the North Atlantic, we can
    narrow our search for the ones that determine whether this macroalga
    can persist on the shore." Previous research has shown that bacteria
    are so essential to the host's structure that algae can literally fall
    apart if given an antibiotic treatment to remove the bacteria. The
    researchers hoped to find which of the bacteria were important to Fucus vesiculosus. After sequencing the bacterial communities at a portion
    of one of the genes that supports bacterial protein synthesis, they
    classified the bacteria from genus to ecotype by a marker gene analysis technique called Minimum Entropy Decomposition, which is now widely used
    by microbiologists. This results in each different type of bacterium
    being assigned a different Amplicon Sequence Variant (ASV) ID.



    ========================================================================== "This is like a molecular fishing expedition that can narrow our
    search for those bacteria that may be most important to the alga,"
    Brawley says. "Finding bacteria that are tissue-specific suggests,
    but doesn't prove, that they might be particularly important to the
    function of the tissue and the persistence of the alga. We have isolated
    pure cultures of some of these bacteria and are studying their genomes, relative growth rates and competition with each other." For example,
    the study uncovered many unrecognized members of the bacterial genus Granulosicoccus through their association with particular tissues --
    from the holdfast that binds the alga to a surface, to the reproductive
    organs, to the main photosynthetic tissue. The research also revealed distinctive levels of different environmental factors that correlated
    with particular Granulosicoccus' associations with Fucus at northern,
    central and/or southern latitudes, and showed how these Granulosicoccus
    relate to bacteria in this genus found on other kinds of marine life
    like sponges, coral, and red and green algae.

    "Before you can understand how and why, you have to understand who,"
    Brawley says. "This is a very rich source of who is where." There were
    some unintended discoveries as part of the field research, as well.

    Over the course of the project's years of field research, the scientists observed the local extinction ofFucus vesiculosus at a site in Beaufort,
    North Carolina, where it had long been abundant. The site was considered
    the southernmost range of F. vesiculosuswhen the study started in 2015; it
    had disappeared by late 2016. Temperature sensors the researchers had at
    the site suggested that stress from warmer air and seawater temperatures, combined with tropical storms during its autumn reproductive season,
    could explain its disappearance and failure to reappear through 2021.

    "We don't know where the southern edge of the U.S. range is now,"
    Brawley says.

    "We are interested as marine biologists to know how vulnerable organisms
    are on the shore to climate change. Our ongoing research is exploring
    possible effects of the bacteria on the Fucus through physiological and
    genomic studies. We want to know whether some bacteria are protective
    and whether the structure of the bacterial community on the host has
    been perturbed by climate change." Brawley isn't the only researcher
    on the project with connections to UMaine.

    Authors Kyle Capistrant-Fossa and Charlotte Quigley are recent UMaine
    M.S. and Ph.D. graduates, respectively. Ester Serra~o, another author on
    the study, received her Ph.D. from UMaine in 1996 and is now a professor
    and Pew Foundation Marine Fellow at the University of Algarve in Portugal.



    ========================================================================== Leigh Stearns, also a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Maine in geology
    and climate science, collected Fucus at its northern range in Uummannaq, Greenland, during her ongoing glaciology research there as a professor
    of geology at the University of Kansas. Brawley pointed out how rich on scientific and human levels it has been to have a team of researchers
    spanning disciplines and seven home countries.

    The Journal of Phycologywrote a highlight on the article's research and
    used a photograph taken in Acadia National Park at one of the study's
    16 North Atlantic field sites on the December cover.

    The researchers have also compared the bacterial communities on two other species of brown algae on the coast of Maine -- Fucus spiralis, found in
    the high intertidal zone, and Fucus distichusin the low intertidal zone
    -- to see how their bacterial communities compare to those of mid-zoned
    Fucus vesiculosus further north and south of Maine. For example, the
    scientists are testing whether bacterial community structure of the high
    zone F. spiralis on the Maine shore might resemble bacterial communities
    on F. vesiculosusat warmer locations like North Carolina, Delaware and
    Spain more than those on F. vesiculosus in the mid intertidal zone of
    Maine shores.

    Brawley noted that the published and ongoing studies "suggest how
    much the community structure of the bacteria on Fucus vesiculosus
    changes on yearly, seasonal, and latitudinal scales, and contributes to understanding how sensitive the microbiome of F. vesiculosus is to the
    changing environment."

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Maine. Note: Content
    may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Kyle A. Capistrant‐Fossa, Hilary G. Morrison, Aschwin
    H. Engelen,
    Charlotte T.C. Quigley, Aleksey Morozov, Ester A. Serra~o, Juliet
    Brodie, Claire M.M. Gachon, Yacine Badis, Ladd E. Johnson,
    Galice Hoarau, Maria Helena Abreu, Patricia A. Tester,
    Leigh A. Stearns, Susan H. Brawley. The microbiome of the
    habitat‐forming brown alga Fucus vesiculosus (Phaeophyceae)
    has similar cross‐Atlantic structure that reflects past and
    present drivers 1. Journal of Phycology, 2021; 57 (6): 1681 DOI:
    10.1111/jpy.13194 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220311115329.htm

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