Physiological changes during torpor favor association with Endozoicomonas endosymbionts in the urochordate Botrylloides leachii

Frontiers in Microbiology

Microbiology

Yuval Rinkevich¹  Baruch Rinkevich²  Maxim Rubin-Blum²  Amalia Rosner²  Yosef Hyams³  Leonid Brodsky⁴ 

[1] Comprehensive Pneumology Center, Institute of Lung Biology and Disease, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany;Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, National Institute of Oceanography, Haifa, Israel;Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, National Institute of Oceanography, Haifa, Israel;Department of Marine Biology, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel;Tauber Bioinformatics Research Center, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel;Sagol Department of Neurobiology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel;

关键词: ascidians;    torpor;    hibernation;    aestivation;    symbiosis;    Endozoicomonas;    metabolism;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmicb.2023.1072053

 received in 2022-10-17, accepted in 2023-05-02,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Environmental perturbations evoke down-regulation of metabolism in some multicellular organisms, leading to dormancy, or torpor. Colonies of the urochordate Botrylloides leachii enter torpor in response to changes in seawater temperature and may survive for months as small vasculature remnants that lack feeding and reproductive organs but possess torpor-specific microbiota. Upon returning to milder conditions, the colonies rapidly restore their original morphology, cytology and functionality while harboring re-occurring microbiota, a phenomenon that has not been described in detail to date. Here we investigated the stability of B. leachii microbiome and its functionality in active and dormant colonies, using microscopy, qPCR, in situ hybridization, genomics and transcriptomics. A novel lineage of Endozoicomonas, proposed here as Candidatus Endozoicomonas endoleachii, was dominant in torpor animals (53–79% read abundance), and potentially occupied specific hemocytes found only in torpid animals. Functional analysis of the metagenome-assembled genome and genome-targeted transcriptomics revealed that Endozoicomonas can use various cellular substrates, like amino acids and sugars, potentially producing biotin and thiamine, but also expressing various features involved in autocatalytic symbiosis. Our study suggests that the microbiome can be linked to the metabolic and physiological states of the host, B. leachii, introducing a model organism for the study of symbioses during drastic physiological changes, such as torpor.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 Hyams, Rubin-Blum, Rosner, Brodsky, Rinkevich and Rinkevich.