Journal article
Manipulation of the surface-associated bacteria on Asparagopsis taxiformis and its effect on seaweed growth and halogenated natural products
Journal of Applied Phycology, Vol.37, pp.2679-2689
2025
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
Epiphytic bacteria can play a crucial role in regulating seaweed traits, yet their specific contributions to both host growth and natural products remain unclear for most seaweeds. Here, we explored the effects of manipulating the surface-associated bacteria on the growth and halogenated compounds of two domesticated strains of Asparagopsis taxiformis sporophytes under intensive culture. Under standard conditions, sporophytes had an average surface bacterial density of 1 per 32 µm2. Following five different antibiotic treatments at 10 mg L−1 for 24 h (i.e., penicillin, streptomycin, kanamycin, gentamicin, and vancomycin), bacterial densities were significantly reduced depending on the antibiotic, averaging 1 per 90 µm2. Antibiotics treatment led to 22–89% reductions in bacterial density compared to controls after 2 weeks, with gentamicin and streptomycin most effective (86–89% reductions to ~ 1 per 260 µm2), followed by vancomycin (77%), kanamycin (23%) and penicillin (22%). We examined the impacts on growth and the concentration of two major halogenated compounds, bromoform and dibromoacetic acid, with a combined concentration of 1–2% dry weight. Our results highlight that the antibiotic treatments with the lowest bacterial densities (gentamicin and streptomycin) had higher growth rates than the control (> 50% increase). We observed a negative impact on the bromoform and dibromoacetic acid concentrations, with 42% and 35% reductions, respectively, dependent on strain and antibiotic. Overall, our study demonstrates that the epiphytic bacteria in A. taxiformis cultures can be manipulated to enhance seaweed biomass production, but there may be a trade off in natural product levels in some culture lines.
Details
- Title
- Manipulation of the surface-associated bacteria on Asparagopsis taxiformis and its effect on seaweed growth and halogenated natural products
- Authors
- S. Blanco (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringA. H. Campbell - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - BiomedicineS. F. Cummins - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringD. A. Heyne - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringN. A. Paul - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Publication details
- Journal of Applied Phycology, Vol.37, pp.2679-2689
- Publisher
- Springer Dordrecht
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10811-025-03530-z
- ISSN
- 1573-5176
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- Data are available upon reasonable request.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Biomedicine; School of Science, Technology and Engineering; Centre for Bioinnovation
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991130084102621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
14 File views/ downloads
145 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Web Of Science research areas
- Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
- Marine & Freshwater Biology
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
Source: SDGs from InCites