A distinctive epibiotic bacterial community on the soft coral Dendronephthya sp. and antibacterial activity of coral tissue extracts suggest a chemical mechanism against bacterial epibiosis

Tilmann Harder; Stanley C K Lau; Sergey Dobretsov; Tsz K Fang; Pei-Yuan Qian

doi:10.1111/j.1574-6941.2003.tb01074.x

A distinctive epibiotic bacterial community on the soft coral Dendronephthya sp. and antibacterial activity of coral tissue extracts suggest a chemical mechanism against bacterial epibiosis

FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 2003 Apr 1;43(3):337-47. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2003.tb01074.x.

Authors

Tilmann Harder¹, Stanley C K Lau, Sergey Dobretsov, Tsz K Fang, Pei-Yuan Qian

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, SAR Hong Kong, PR China.

PMID: 19719665
DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2003.tb01074.x

Abstract

Abstract Different bacterial community profiles were observed on the soft coral Dendronephthya sp. and an inanimate reference site using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of bacterial community DNA. To correlate the observation with a chemical defense mechanism against bacterial epibiosis, antibacterial effects of coral tissue extracts and waterborne products of coral-associated bacterial isolates (11 morphotypes) were tested against indigenous benthic bacterial isolates (33 morphotypes) obtained in the vicinity of the coral colonies. The coral tissue extracts and waterborne products of coral-associated bacteria inhibited growth and attachment of indigenous bacterial isolates, suggesting an endogenous chemical and an exogenous biological mechanism against bacterial epibiosis in this soft coral.