Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes-CSIC, Accés a la Cala St Francesc 14, 17300 Blanes, Girona, Spain.
Mar Drugs. 2013 Feb 18;11(2):489-503. doi: 10.3390/md11020489.
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 a population 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.
几项研究报告了海绵代谢产物产量的时间、地理和个体内变异。然而，调节代谢产物产生的内部和/或外部因素仍知之甚少。avarol 和衍生物）具有有趣的医学特性，这促使人们进行了研究，以获得足够数量的这些代谢产物，用于药物发现的研究。在这一框架内，从西北地中海的一个种群中采集了 Dysidea avara 的标本，并对其次生代谢产物进行了定量分析，以评估它们的变异性以及与外部（季节性、与邻居的相互作用）和内部（繁殖阶段）因素的可能关系。结果表明，avarol 及其单乙酸酯衍生物的数量随时间而变化，与海水温度没有明显关系。也没有发现与海绵繁殖的权衡关系。然而，我们的研究结果首次表明，海绵能够根据邻居的性质，在其周围区域增加次生代谢产物的产生或积累。这一发现可以解释在海绵化学生态学研究中通常发现的次生代谢产物数量高度变异性的部分原因，并为提高海绵培养物中代谢产物的产量开辟了新的生物技术方法。
