Phylogenetic Appraisal of the Drug Bearing Marine Sponge, Callyspongia subarmigera (Ridley, 1884) from South India

Abstract

Tropical Callyspongia subarmigera prevalent in the south-east coast of India was studied for evaluating the bioactivity and phylogenetic resemblance with other drug-bearing species. Antibacterial screening of the methanol extract of C. subarmigera against clinical and fish pathogens displayed their broad spectrum against Gram positive and Gram negative pathogenic strains. Fish pathogenic bacteria Vibrio pelagius and Vibrio fischeri and the clinical pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa were highly susceptible to the methanol extract. Sponge extract had no antifungal property against the two fungal strains tested viz., Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans. Callyspongia subarmigera extract indicated cytotoxic activity with an LC50 of 0.39% against Artermia nauplii in 24 h. PCR protocol was carried out using a 16S rRNA primer and an 18S rRNA primer and the annealing temperature was standardized at 55°C. BLAST analysis was conducted to detect the resemblance of different species of Callyspongia genera of sponges. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using neighbour joining method and the results revealed that C. subarmigera had the nearest homology to that of Haliclona cinerea, Haliclona oculata (88%) and Callyspongia spp (88%) possessing pharmacological relevance.