PBRC researchers publish work on biofouling
The new paper, “Bacterial envelope polysaccharide cues settlement and metamorphosis in the biofouling tubeworm Hydroides elegans,” was published in July 2024 in the Nature journal Communications Biology.
Authors: Marnie L. Freckelton , Brian T. Nedved and Michael G. Hadfield
Kewalo Marine Laboratory, Pacific Biosciences Research Center, SOEST.
Complex communities of plants and animals on the bottom of the world’s seas, from the highest intertidal regions to the greatest depths, vary with latitude (thus temperature), salinity, depth and other chemical/physical characteristics. Evidence has been growing for the past 20 – 30 years that these physical and chemical characteristics also determine which bacteria make up the primary biofilm communities that first and rapidly coat newly submerged surfaces in the seas. This evidence has also revealed that specific bacteria in these biofilms stimulate the planktonic larvae of marine invertebrate animals and spores of algae to settle on them, metamorphose into growing juveniles and become reproductive members of complex communities of multicellular organisms.
In this way, biofilm bacteria first establish and then maintain communities of animals and plants on the ocean bottoms by recruiting their larvae and spores to the sites. The research presented in this paper is thus groundbreaking in its analysis and presentation of the macromolecules on the surfaces of very specific biofilm bacterial species that interact with receptors on the surfaces of larvae of a globally distributed, warm-water tubeworm and induce them settle and metamorphose. The tubeworm is a dominant member of its benthic communities and a major problem for the shipping industry as it coats the hulls and propellers of ships, as well as piers, the nets of mariculture facilities, and the pipes that bring cooling sea water to electrical and industrial facilities. The research provides strong evidence for the bacterial-molecular basis of the formation and maintenance of all benthic marine communities in the world’s seas.