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The Bacterial Basis of Biofouling: a Case Study

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Title The Bacterial Basis of Biofouling: a Case Study
 
Creator Hadfield, Michael G.
Asahina, Audrey
Hennings, Shaun
Nedved, Brian
 
Subject Larval settlement
Biofilms
Hydroides elegans
Metamorphosis
Biofouling
 
Description 2075-2084
For
billions of years bacteria have profusely colonized all parts of the oceans and
formed biofilms on the benthos. Thus, from their onset, evolving marine animals
adapted to the microbial world throughout their life cycles. One of the major
adaptations is the use of bacterial products as signals for recruitment by
larvae of many species in the seven invertebrate phyla that make up most of the
biofouling community. We describe here investigations on the recruitment
biology of one such species, the circum-tropical serpulid polychaete Hydroides elegans. Insights gained from
in-depth studies on adults and larvae of H.
elegans include: apparently constant transport of these biofouling worms on
the hulls of ships maintains a globally panmictic population; larvae complete
metamorphosis with little or no de novo
gene transcription or translation; larvae of this tube-worm settle selectively
in response to specific biofilm-dwelling bacterial species; and biofilms
provide not only a cue for settlement sites, but also increase the adhesion
strength of the settling worms’ tubes on a substratum. Although biofilm-bacterial
species are critical to larval-settlement induction, not all biofilm elements
are inductive. Because studies on chemoreception systems in the larvae failed
to find evidence for the presence of common chemoreceptors, we focused on the
bacterial cues themselves. To do this, we studied a widely distributed and
strongly inductive biofilm bacterium, Pseudoalteromonas
luteoviolacea. Using molecular manipulations of its genome, we learned that
it produces complex clusters of bacteriocins, multi-protein structures
evolutionarily derived from phage-tail elements, which induce metamorphosis of H. elegans. But large questions remain:
how do these complex structures bring about induction? Do larvae of other
invertebrate species that settle in response to P. luteoviolacea also metamorphose in response to its bacteriocins?
Do all inductive bacterial species produce bacteriocins? As a whole, the
described studies on the recruitment of Hydroides
elegans demonstrate the importance of in-depth investigations of model
species for understanding the problem of biofouling as well as the ubiquity of
essential animal-bacterial interactions in the sea.
 
Date 2016-06-30T05:12:22Z
2016-06-30T05:12:22Z
2014-11
 
Type Article
 
Identifier 0975-1033 (Online); 0379-5136 (Print)
http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/34577
 
Language en_US
 
Rights CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India
 
Publisher NISCAIR-CSIR, India
 
Source IJMS Vol.43(11) [November 2014]