Frias-Lopez Jorge, Klaus James S, Bonheyo George T, Fouke Bruce W
Department of Geology, University of Illinois, 1301 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2004 Oct;70(10):5955-62. doi: 10.1128/AEM.70.10.5955-5962.2004.
Black band disease (BBD) is a virulent polymicrobial disease primarily affecting massive-framework-building species of scleractinian corals. While it has been well established that the BBD bacterial mat is dominated by a cyanobacterium, the quantitative composition of the BBD bacterial mat community has not described previously. Terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis was used to characterize the infectious bacterial community of the bacterial mat causing BBD. These analyses revealed that the bacterial composition of the BBD mat does not vary between different coral species but does vary when different species of cyanobacteria are dominant within the mat. On the basis of the results of a new method developed to identify organisms detected by T-RFLP analysis, our data show that besides the cyanobacterium, five species of the division Firmicutes, two species of the Cytophaga-Flexibacter-Bacteroides (CFB) group, and one species of delta-proteobacteria are also consistently abundant within the infectious mat. Of these dominant taxa, six were consistently detected in healthy corals. However, four of the six were found in much higher numbers in BBD mats than in healthy corals. One species of the CFB group and one species of Firmicutes were not always associated with the bacterial communities present in healthy corals. Of the eight dominant bacteria identified, two species were previously found in clone libraries obtained from BBD samples; however, these were not previously recognized as important. Furthermore, despite having been described as an important component of the pathogenetic mat, a Beggiatoa species was not detected in any of the samples analyzed. These results will permit the dominant BBD bacteria to be targeted for isolation and culturing experiments aimed at deciphering the disease etiology.
黑带病（BBD）是一种致命的多微生物疾病，主要影响造礁珊瑚的大型框架构建物种。虽然已经充分证实黑带病细菌垫以一种蓝细菌为主导，但此前尚未描述过黑带病细菌垫群落的定量组成。末端限制性片段长度多态性（T-RFLP）分析被用于表征导致黑带病的细菌垫的感染性细菌群落。这些分析表明，黑带病细菌垫的细菌组成在不同珊瑚物种之间没有差异，但当垫内不同种类的蓝细菌占主导时会有所不同。基于为鉴定通过T-RFLP分析检测到的生物体而开发的一种新方法的结果，我们的数据显示，除了蓝细菌外，厚壁菌门的五个物种、噬纤维菌-屈挠杆菌-拟杆菌（CFB）组的两个物种以及δ-变形菌门的一个物种在感染性细菌垫中也始终大量存在。在这些优势分类群中，有六个在健康珊瑚中始终被检测到。然而，这六个中的四个在黑带病细菌垫中的数量比在健康珊瑚中高得多。CFB组的一个物种和厚壁菌门的一个物种并不总是与健康珊瑚中存在的细菌群落相关联。在鉴定出的八种优势细菌中，有两个物种此前在从黑带病样本获得的克隆文库中被发现；然而，它们此前未被认为是重要的。此外，尽管被描述为致病细菌垫的重要组成部分，但在任何分析的样本中都未检测到一种贝氏硫细菌。这些结果将使黑带病的优势细菌能够成为旨在破译疾病病因的分离和培养实验的目标。
