Abstract
Several studies report temporal, geographical, and intra-individual variation in sponge metabolite yields. However, the internal and/or external factors that regulate the metabolite production remain poorly understood. Dysidea avara is a demosponge that produces sesquiterpenoids (avarol and derivatives) with interesting medical properties, which has prompted addressed studies to obtain enough amounts of these metabolites for research on drug discovery. Within this framework, specimens of Dysidea avara from apopulation of the Northwest Mediterranean were sampled and their secondary metabolites quantified to assess their variability and the possible relationship with external (seasonality, interactions with neighbors) and internal (reproductive stages) factors. The results show a variation of the amount of both avarol and its monoacetate derivative with time, with no clear relationship with seawater temperature. A trade-off with sponge reproduction was not found either. However, our results showed for the first time that sponges are able to increase production or accumulation of secondary metabolites in their peripheral zone depending on the nature of their neighbors. This finding could explain part of the high variability in the amount of secondary metabolites usually found in chemical ecology studies on sponges and opens new biotechnological approaches to enhance the metabolite yield in sponge cultures.
Highlights
A great many of today’s commonly used medicines have arisen from naturally produced metabolites
Both avarol and 5′-monoacetylavarol vary with time, no direct relationship between metabolite production and seawater temperature has been found
Our results show that sponges are able to produce or accumulate the secondary metabolites in specific parts of their tissue depending on the nature of their neighbors
Summary
A great many of today’s commonly used medicines have arisen from naturally produced metabolites. In the framework of chemical ecology, many studies targeting marine sponges have established parallels with studies on plants in terrestrial systems. Both plants and sponges are important contributors, in terms of biomass and interactions, to their communities [3,4]. Both are sessile organisms whose ecological interactions (such as defence against predators, foulers, and competitors for space) are often chemically-mediated through secondary metabolites (reviewed in [5,6,7]). Grazing may produce similar harmful effects on plants and sponges; the plant response against the epiphytes can be compared to the antifouling reaction of some sponges; while the plant-plant interactions are equivalent to the interactions occurring during space competition among invertebrates and algae in marine benthic systems
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