New species of coral, sponges found near Hawaii

New and dramatic species of coral and sponges have been found in the Pacific during deep sea dives near the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, scientists said Monday.

Submersibles operated by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory discovered the species in early December in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. They found the species during dives nearly 1 mile deep.

Christopher Kelley, the lab's program biologist, called sponges found at dive sites off Middle Bank, some 120 miles northwest of Hawaii, "absolutely bizarre."

During radio transmissions between the submersible Pisces IV and its support ship, Kelley said one observer remarked when first seeing the sponges, "It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss."

Kelley will be working with other scientists to identify the sponges.

"There are lots of things down there that are just brand new," he said. "We don't know what they are, and this is a fantastic opportunity to try and help the monument and determine what some of the deep water resources are."

The expedition marked the first time the lab used high definition video cameras to capture images of its deep ocean work.

The quality of the HD video is so good, scientists expect to be able to identify some animals from the video alone, rather than having to collect actual specimens, Kelley said.

In addition to its research value, HD brings the deep sea experience to the general public, he said.

"It's really the type of quality we see out the windows of the submersible," Kelley said. "People are going to be seeing what we're seeing. People are going to see why we're so excited about these deep water environments, because these animals are spectacular."

Sponges Recycle Carbon to Give Life to Coral Reefs

Coral reefs support some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, yet they thrive in a marine desert. So how do reefs sustain their thriving populations?

Marine biologist Fleur Van Duyl from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is fascinated by the energy budgets that support coral reefs in this impoverished environment. According to van Duyl's former student, Jasper De Goeij, Halisarca caerulea sponges grow in the deep dark cavities beneath reefs, and 90% of their diet is composed of dissolved organic carbon, which is inedible for most other reef residents. But when De Goeij measured the amount of carbon that the brightly coloured sponges consumed he found that they consume half of their own weight each day, yet they never grew.

What were the sponges doing with the carbon? Were the sponges really consuming that much carbon, or was there a problem with De Goeij's measurements? He had to find out where the carbon was going to back up his measurements and publishes his discovery that sponges have one of the fastest cell division rates ever measured, and instead of growing they discard the cells. Essentially, the sponges recycle carbon that would otherwise be lost to the reef. De Goeij publishes his discovery on November 13 2009 in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Travelling to the Dutch Antilles with his student, Anna De Kluijver, De Goeij started SCUBA diving with the sponges to find out how much carbon they consume. 'It is quite dark and technically difficult to work in the cavities,' explains De Goeij, but the duo collected sponges, placed them in small chambers and exposed the sponges to 5- bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU). 'The BrdU is only incorporated into the DNA of dividing cells,' explains De Goeij, so cells that carry the BrdU label must be dividing, or have divided, since the molecule was added to the sponge's water, and cells can only divide if they are taking up carbon. But when De Goeij returned to the Netherlands with his samples, he had problems finding the elusive label.

Discussing the BrdU detection problem with his father, biochemist Anton De Goeij, De Goeij Senior offered to introduce his son to Bert Schutte in Maastricht, who had developed a BrdU detection system for use in cancer therapy. Maybe he could help De Goeij Junior find evidence of cell division in his sponges.

Taking his samples to Jack Cleutjens's Maastricht Pathology laboratory, De Goeij was finally able to detect the BrdU label in his sponge cells. Amazingly, half of the sponge's choanocyte (filtration) cells had divided and the choanocyte's cell division cycle was a phenomenally short 5.4 hours. 'That is quicker than most bacteria divide,' exclaims De Goeij.

The sponge was able to take up the colossal amounts of organic carbon that De Goeij had measured, but where was the carbon going: the sponges weren't growing. De Goeij tested to see if the cells were dying and being lost, but he couldn't find any evidence of cell death.

Presenting his results to the Maastricht Pathology Department, someone said 'Lets look at this like a human intestine, then you should see shedding where old cells detach from the epithelia'. De Goeij knew that he had seen some loose cells, and thought that they were artefacts from cutting the samples, but when he and his Pathology Department colleagues went back and looked at the samples, De Goeij realised that choanocytes were shedding all over the place. And then De Goeij remembered the tiny piles of brown material he found next to the sponges in the aquarium every morning.

The sponges were shedding the newly divided cells, which other reef residents could now consume. 'Halisarca caerulea is the great recycler of energy for the reef by turning over energy that nobody else can use [dissolved organic carbon] into energy that everyone can use [discarded choanocytes],' explains De Goeij.

Adapted from materials provided by The Company of Biologists, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. Original article written by Kathryn Knight.

Sponges Recycle Carbon To Give Life To Coral Reefs

Coral reefs support some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, yet they thrive in a marine desert. So how do reefs sustain their thriving populations?Marine biologist Fleur Van Duyl from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is fascinated by the energy budgets that support coral reefs in this impoverished environment. According to van Duyl's former student, Jasper De Goeij, Halisarca caerulea sponges grow in the deep dark cavities beneath reefs, and 90% of their diet is composed of dissolved organic carbon, which is inedible for most other reef residents. But when De Goeij measured the amount of carbon that the brightly coloured sponges consumed he found that they consume half of their own weight each day, yet they never grew.What were the sponges doing with the carbon? Were the sponges really consuming that much carbon, or was there a problem with De Goeij's measurements? He had to find out where the carbon was going to back up his measurements and publishes his discovery that sponges have one of the fastest cell division rates ever measured, and instead of growing they discard the cells. Essentially, the sponges recycle carbon that would otherwise be lost to the reef. De Goeij publishes his discovery on November 13 2009 in The Journal of Experimental Biology.Travelling to the Dutch Antilles with his student, Anna De Kluijver, De Goeij started SCUBA diving with the sponges to find out how much carbon they consume. 'It is quite dark and technically difficult to work in the cavities,' explains De Goeij, but the duo collected sponges, placed them in small chambers and exposed the sponges to 5- bromo-2Œ-deoxyuridine (BrdU). 'The BrdU is only incorporated into the DNA of dividing cells,' explains De Goeij, so cells that carry the BrdU label must be dividing, or have divided, since the molecule was added to the sponge's water, and cells can only divide if they are taking up carbon. But when De Goeij returned to the Netherlands with his samples, he had problems finding the elusive label.Discussing the BrdU detection problem with his father, biochemist Anton De Goeij, De Goeij Senior offered to introduce his son to Bert Schutte in Maastricht, who had developed a BrdU detection system for use in cancer therapy. Maybe he could help De Goeij Junior find evidence of cell division in his sponges.Taking his samples to Jack Cleutjens's Maastricht Pathology laboratory, De Goeij was finally able to detect the BrdU label in his sponge cells. Amazingly, half of the sponge's choanocyte (filtration) cells had divided and the choanocyte's cell division cycle was a phenomenally short 5.4 hours. 'That is quicker than most bacteria divide,' exclaims De Goeij.The sponge was able to take up the colossal amounts of organic carbon that De Goeij had measured, but where was the carbon going: the sponges weren't growing. De Goeij tested to see if the cells were dying and being lost, but he couldn't find any evidence of cell death.Presenting his results to the Maastricht Pathology Department, someone said 'Lets look at this like a human intestine, then you should see shedding where old cells detach from the epithelia'. De Goeij knew that he had seen some loose cells, and thought that they were artefacts from cutting the samples, but when he and his Pathology Department colleagues went back and looked at the samples, De Goeij realised that choanocytes were shedding all over the place. And then De Goeij remembered the tiny piles of brown material he found next to the sponges in the aquarium every morning.The sponges were shedding the newly divided cells, which other reef residents could now consume. 'Halisarca caerulea is the great recycler of energy for the reef by turning over energy that nobody else can use [dissolved organic carbon] into energy that everyone can use [discarded choanocytes],' explains De Goeij.Journal reference:De Goeij, J. M., De Kluijver, A., Van Duyl, F. C., Vacelet, J., Wijffels, R. H., De Goeij, A. F. P. M., Cleutjens, J. P. M. and Schutte, B. Cell kinetics of the marine sponge Halisarca caerulea reveal rapid cell turnover and shedding. The Journal Of Experimental Biology, 212, 3892-3900 The Company of Biologists

Large Sponges May Be Reattached to Coral Reefs

A new study appearing in Restoration Ecology describes a novel technique for reattaching large sponges that have been dislodged from coral reefs. The findings could be generally applied to the restoration of other large sponge species removed by human activities or storm events.20 specimens of the Caribbean giant barrel sponge were removed and reattached at Conch Reef off of Key Largo, Florida in 2004 and 2005 at depths of 15m and 30m. The sponges were affixed to the reef using sponge holders consisting of polyvinyl chloride piping, which was anchored in a concrete block that was set on a plastic mesh base.Though the test area endured four hurricanes during the study period, 62.5 percent of sponges survived at least 2.3-3 years and 90 percent of the sponges attached in deep water locations survived. The sponges reattached to the reef after being held stationary by sponge holders for as little as 6 months.Large sponges may be damaged by a variety of natural events and human activities including severe storms, vessel groundings and the cutting movements of chain or rope moved along with debris by strong currents. After these events, detached large sponges are commonly found, still alive and intact, between reef spurs on sand or rubble where they slowly erode under the action of oscillating currents."The worldwide decline of coral reef ecosystems has prompted many local restoration efforts, which typically focus on reattachment of reef-building corals," says Professor Joseph Pawlik of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, co-author of the study. "Despite their dominance on coral reefs, large sponges are generally excluded from restoration efforts because of a lack of suitable methods for sponge reattachment."These sponges, which often exceed reef-building corals in abundance, can be more than 1m in diameter and may be hundreds or thousands of years old. The success of past attempts at reattaching sponges, which used cement or epoxy, has been limited because adhesives do not bind to sponge tissue. When damaged or dislodged, large sponges usually die because they are unable to reattach to the reef. The results of the study show that these sponges have the ability to reattach to the reef if they can be properly secured.

Common Marine Sponges May Provide Super-antibiotics Of The Future

No matter how sophisticated modern medicine becomes, common ailments like fungal infections can outrun the best of the world's antibiotics. In people with compromised immune systems (like premature babies, AIDS victims or those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer) the risk is very high: contracting a fungal infection can be deadly.

Now Tel Aviv University zoologists are diving deep into the sea to collect unique chemicals — drugs of the future — to beat unnecessary death by fungal infection. And their secret weapon is the common marine sponge.
Prof. Micha Ilan from the Department of Zoology at TAU, who is heading the project, has already identified several alternative antibiotic candidates among the unique compounds that help a sponge fend off predators and infections. He and his graduate students are now identifying, isolating and purifying those that could be the super-antibiotics of the future.
The research group at TAU has found and isolated thousands bacteria and fungi, including a few hundred unique actinobacteria. So far, several tens hold promise as new drugs.
From the Sea to the Lab
"Resistance to antibiotics has become an unbelievably difficult challenge for the medical community," says Prof. Ilan. "Sponges are known for hosting an arsenal of compounds that could work to fight infections. We're now culturing huge amounts of microorganisms, such as actinobacteria, that live in symbiosis with marine sponges."
Marine sponges were recently made famous by the popular Nickelodeon TV cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, which features a sea sponge who lives in a pineapple beneath the ocean. In real life, sea sponges are animals whose bodies consist of an outer thin layer of cells and an inner mass of cells and skeletal elements. The sedentary creatures don't really have the sort of adventurous life that the cartoon depicts.
Marine sponges can't move. Glued to the seafloor, they must rely on the flow of water through their bodies to collect food and to remove waste. This has led to a unique adaptive response to enemies and competition. Sponges don't have teeth, or shells, but protect themselves by building associations and partnerships with bacteria and fungi. Tel Aviv University is tapping into these relationships — looking at the same chemicals that the sponge uses for defense to fight infection in humans.
Research Combines Several Fields of Study
Drug developers have known for decades about the potential goldmine of pharmaceuticals in the marine environment, particularly among sedentary life like marine sponges.
"One of the major problems is that these novel and natural compounds are found in very small quantities," Prof. Ilan explains. Collecting and extracting such large amounts of these unique chemicals would require huge quantities of animals to be sacrificed, a practice which is not in line with zoological conservationist values. So Prof. Ilan takes cultures from sea sponges with minimal damage to the natural environment. He then grows their symbionts and tests them in a "wet" laboratory. The methods Prof. Ilan has perfected can now be used by other scientists developing pharmaceuticals from marine sponges.
"Our research is unique in that we take both an agricultural and microbiological approach — not found often in the drug discovery community," says Prof. Ilan, whose work is done in collaboration with the School of Chemistry's Prof. Yoel Kashman and Prof. Shmuel Carmeli.
Adapted from materials provided by Tel Aviv University.

Sea sponge shows promise as superbug antidote

A compound from a sea sponge was able to reverse antibiotic resistance in several strains of bacteria, making once-resistant strains succumb to readily available antibiotics, U.S. researchers said on Friday."We can resensitize these pathogenic bacteria to standard, current-generation antibiotics," said Peter Moeller of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina.Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA. Such infections kill about 19,000 people a year in the United States.Moeller, who is working with researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and North Carolina State University, said the team noticed a sponge thriving in what was an otherwise dead coral reef."It begged the question how is it surviving when everything else is dying?" Moeller told reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago. "This opened up a whole new arena for us."The researchers began chopping the sponge into smaller and smaller bits to isolate the properties that helped the sponge thrive in hostile marine conditions.The team found that these bits of sponge were able to repel bacterial biofilms -- a slimy substance bacteria form to help stick to surfaces."What we found is these (sponge) derivatives actually dispersed existing bacterial biofilms as well as inhibited production of subsequent bacterial biofilms," Moeller said."This is a very exciting result when you realize that 65 to 80 percent of all human pathogenic infections are based on biofilms," he added.Moeller said the team tested the substance on some of the toughest pathogens, including MRSA.They found when they mixed this sponge material in with an antibiotic, they were able to make several types of once-resistant bacteria sensitive to antibiotics.Since the compounds are non-toxic, Moeller said the team is now working with a number of medical device companies to incorporate it into the plastic materials used to make devices like stents used to prop open diseased arteries or in intravenous lines used in critically ill patients. He declined to name the companies."The idea is that we could get rid of bacterial infections that are so common to them," Moeller said.Eventually, he foresees a new class of "helper drugs" that could restore the potency of antibiotics that have lost the war to superbugs. "Getting it through FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approval will take awhile," he said.

Voracious Sponges In Underwater Caves Save Reefs

Tropical oceans are known as the deserts of the sea. And yet this unlikely environment is the very place where the rich and fertile coral reef grows. Dutch researcher Jasper de Goeij investigated how caves in the coral reef ensure the reef’s continued existence. Although sponges in these coral caves take up a lot of dissolved organic material, they scarcely grow. However, they do discard a lot of cells that in turn provide food for the organisms on the reef.

Caves in coral reefs are the largest and least well known part of the reef. De Goeij investigated coral caves near Curacao and Indonesia. Up until now it had been assumed that cave sponges could only eat by filtering the non-dissolved particles from the seawater. This research demonstrated, however, that the caves contain far more dissolved material than non-dissolved material.
The reef’s guts
Cave sponges take up enormous quantities of dissolved organic material from seawater. The question is whether they merely take up the material or whether they also process it. De Goeij revealed that the sponges process forty percent of the material and take up sixty percent. This should lead to a doubling of the sponges' biomass every two to three days. However, cave sponges scarcely grow.
The coral caves are densely populated and so there is scarcely any space to grow. Instead of growing the cave sponges rapidly rejuvenate their filtration cells and discard their old cells. This short cell cycle is unique for multicellular organisms and to date was only known to occur in unicellular organisms. The production and breakdown process of the sponge cells mirrors that in the human intestinal tract.
Eating and being eaten
Coal reef maintains itself in a remarkable manner. The algae and corals on the reef produce dissolved organic material. Before this material flows into the open ocean sponges in the caves take it up. The sponges rapidly filter enormous quantities of water and convert dissolved material into particles. These particles are in turn consumed by the algae and corals on the reef. In this manner, the various inhabitants of the reef facilitate each other's survival.
Sponges produce many substances that could contribute to the development of new medicines, antibiotics and cosmetics. However, rearing sponges is far from easy. Unravelling how these sponges function could solve this problem and this research has contributed towards this.
Jasper de Goeij's research was funded with a grant from WOTRO Science for Global Development, one of NWO's scientific divisions. De Goeij carried out his work at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.
Adapted from materials provided by NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research).

Light Inside Sponges: Sponges Invented (and Employed) The First Fiber Optics

Fiber optics as light conductors are obviously not just a recent invention. Sponges (Porifera) -- the phylogenetically oldest, multicellular organisms (Metazoa) -- are able to transduce light inside their bodies by employing amorphous, siliceous structures.

Already more than ten years ago, the finding of photosynthetically active organisms inside sponges raised the question, how they could survive there in an otherwise presumably dark space. Already at that time, the marine biologists Elda Gaino and Michele Sarà from Genova, Italy, hypothesized, that light might be transferred inside the sponge body.
Marine zoologists from the University of Stuttgart, and from the Leibnitz Institute for Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, both within the research project BIOTECmarin, could now show, that the siliceous skeletal elements (spiculae) of the marine sponge Tethya aurantium in fact can transduce light, and do so in living sponges.
Sponges without those spicules -- like the aspicular sponge Aplysina aerophoba -- are not able to transport light inside their tissue. In their latest research, the scientists from Stuttgart and Kiel are the first to demonstrate light transduction inside living sponges. Until now light transduction could only be shown in explanted single spicules after laser illumination.
The authors Franz Brümmer, Martin Pfannkuchen, Alexander Baltz, Thomas Hauser and Vera Thiel published these exciting results in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology with the title: Light inside sponges.
Journal reference:
Brümmer et al. Light inside sponges. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 2008; DOI: 10.1016/j.jembe.2008.06.036
Adapted from materials provided by University of Stuttgart, via AlphaGalileo.

Nature's 'fibre optics' experts

The spicules of sponges viewed under high magnification Sea sponges can beam light deep inside their bodies, and do so using the natural equivalent of fibre optic cables, scientists have found. Sponges are among the oldest and simplest of Earth's animals. The discovery that they use such a futuristic light transmission system has therefore delighted researchers. The finding, made by a German team, is published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. Whereas other animals pass electrical currents around their bodies using nerve cells, sponges appear to be the only animals capable of transmitting light around their bodies in this way, the group says. This may help explain why some sponges are able to grow so big, and also clear up a long-standing mystery about how other, much smaller organisms are able to live deep within the bodies of large sponges. Glass skeletons Sponges mainly live in the sea, and are extremely primitive organisms. They lack muscles, nerves and internal organs, for example, and are essentially a diverse set of cells supported by a hard exoskeleton. Two of the three major types of sponge build their skeletons using special structures called spicules. These are made from silica and are basically glass rods. Previous experiments suggested that light can pass along these structures. Now, Franz Brummer, of the University of Stuttgart, and colleagues have proved that living sponges use these internal glass rods as light conductors. Photosensitive paper was placed inside sponges of the species T. aurantium Light reaching the surface of the sponge is reflected off the insides of each spicule in much the same way light bounces along the inside of a fibre optic cable used to transmit electronic data. In doing so, light is beamed deep into the sponge. Brummer's team made the discovery using living sponges of the species Tethya aurantium. They collected the sponges from shallow waters off the coast of Croatia, and then transferred them to tanks of seawater. They then implanted light sensitive paper deep inside each sponge. They did so under dark conditions and then exposed the surface of the sponge to light. When they checked the paper, they found it was covered in spots, which corresponded exactly with where light would exit each spicule. Shared existence In a control experiment, the researchers tested another sponge that does not grow using glass spicules. No light entered deep within it, showing that spicules are necessary to transmit the light. "Sponges are fascinating animals and there're lots about them we are waiting to discover," says Brummer. He suspects that deep-sea sponges may use giant natural fibre optic arrays to harvest what little light reaches them. "Sponges in the deep sea can form spicules up to one metre long and two centimetres in diameter," he explains. Beaming light deep inside their bodies may explain why some sponges grow to such large sizes, and develop rounded shapes. To grow big, sponges need essential nutrients, including carbon, nitrogen and other metabolites. These are provided by smaller organisms such as algae and cyanobacteria, with which the sponges have a symbiotic relationship. But these smaller organisms need light to survive. Because of this they usually live on the outside of sponges. In 1994, however, researchers discovered that algae sometimes do live deep within the bodies of sponges, creating a mystery as to how they survive there. The answer, as Brummer's team has now confirmed, is that they live off light beamed down to them. BBC News online

Bacteria from sponges make new pharmaceuticals

Thousands of interesting new compounds have been discovered inside the bodies of marine sponges according to scientists speaking today (Tuesday 4 September 2007) at the Society for General Microbiology's 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.Over half of the bodyweight of living sea sponges - including the sort that we use in our baths - is made up of the many different bacteria that live inside them, in the same way that we all have bacteria living in our guts which help us to digest our food."Marine sponges are the most prolific and important source of new active compounds discovered in the last twenty or thirty years in our seas. We thought it likely that many of the interesting new compounds we were discovering inside sea sponges were actually being made by the bacteria inside their bodies, not the sponges themselves", says Dr Detmer Sipkema of University College Berkeley, in California, USA.Unfortunately the scientists discovered that it is very difficult to grow these bacteria in the laboratory, as the environment inside a sponge is significantly different from conditions in the surrounding seawater. Currently, only between one in a hundred and one in a thousand types of bacteria can be cultured artificially."We are trying to culture the other 99% by simulating the microenvironment in the sponge where the bacteria live", says Dr Sipkema. "The next step will be to identify which bacteria are responsible for the production of the most medically interesting compounds and try to culture these on a larger scale. Most attempts to properly test these important bioactive compounds in hospital patients have failed because doctors simply cannot get enough of the products to prove that the clinical trials are effective or safe".So far, by trying a lot of different cultivation methods, the scientists have been successful in culturing about 10% of the different sorts of bacteria that live in the sponges.As well as their attempt to produce useful pharmaceutical compounds on a commercial scale, the researchers believe that successfully culturing these little known bacteria will give new insights into evolution."Marine sponges were the first multicellular organisms to evolve on earth that are still alive. This implies that the relationship between the sponge and its bacterial inhabitants may also be very old", says Dr Detmer Sipkema. "Therefore sponges are interesting to study the evolution of symbiosis, teaching us about the way different organisms have developed their mutual relationships".Society for General Microbiology

New Glass Sponge Reefs found

Thirty miles west of Grays Harbor, University of Washington scientists have discovered large colonies of glass sponges thriving on the seafloor। The species of glass sponges capable of building reefs were thought extinct for 100 million years until they were found in recent years in the protected waters of Canada's Georgia and Hecata straits, the only place in the world they've been observed until now.

The discovery in Washington waters extends the range of reef-building glass sponges into open ocean.
The sponge reefs could be important to the ecosystems on the Washington coast because they create a thriving oasis dense with sea life on seafloor that is otherwise sparely populated for miles, says Paul Johnson, UW professor of oceanography and chief scientist on the UW's ship Thomas G। Thompson, June 10-16, when the Washington glass sponge reefs were discovered. The glass sponge reefs were alive with zooplankton, sardines, crabs, prawns and rockfish.

"It's like looking at an overcrowded aquarium in an expensive Japanese restaurant," he says.
The Washington sponge reefs are each hundreds of feet in length and width. It's possible that the state has reefs comparable to the Canadian reefs that are miles in length, Johnson says.
The glass sponge reefs on the continental shelf west of Grays Harbor appear to be thriving on specialized bacteria that consume methane gas that the UW scientists were surprised to discover flowing out of the seafloor in copious amounts. Methane has not been detected by Canadian scientists near their glass sponge reefs, thus the Washington margin reefs could represent a new type of ecosystem on the shelf, one where the abundant biology is fueled by methane gas derived from ancient carbon in the sediments, Johnson says.
The glass sponges -- so-called because their skeletons are made of silica (the same material as beach sand) -- come in un-sponge-like shapes similar to cups and funnels। They range in color from creamy white to brilliant hues of yellow. The reefs build upward as new generations of sponges grow atop the still-hard silica skeletons of previous generations. The reefs just discovered are in 650 feet of water and rise between 6 and 15 feet above the seafloor. The sponges on the mounds grow as tall as 1 ½ feet.

The mounds off Grays Harbor have the same trio of glass sponge species as the reefs discovered in Canadian waters. The reefs in the Georgia and Hecata straits are in relatively protected marine waters, causing scientists to previously speculate that those reef-building glass sponges required a special ecological niche that allowed them to grow in those waters.
The field discovered on the open Washington shelf is very exposed to winter storms, which makes it much more likely that other reef-building glass sponges are still to be found around the globe, for example, on the Alaskan and Russian continental shelves, Johnson says.
Solitary glass sponges are found living in many parts of the world's oceans but are composed of different species than the ones capable of colonizing themselves into reefs. Individual glass sponges generally live 100 to 200 years and the Canadian sponge reefs have been dated as being 8,000 years old, making them comparable to coral reefs and redwood forests, Johnson says.
The reef-building sponge species had their heyday 150 million years ago when ocean conditions allowed them to grown near the surface of the ocean. Their fossilized remains, for example, are found in outcrops that are hundreds of miles long on land throughout Europe, all sites that were underwater in the late Jurassic period. It was thought the reef-building glass sponges were all driven to extinction 100 million years ago when diatoms, single-celled algae that also require silica dissolved in seawater, evolved in the global oceans and began using up the silica needed by the reef-building glass sponges.
The Washington and British Columbia reef-building glass sponges have learned to live at water depths that are below the sunlit zone where diatoms live but where the essential dissolved silica they need is available।

Johnson originally participated in a 2005 Canadian expedition to the Georgia Strait sponge reef and reasoned that a similar environment existed on the Washington shelf. The expedition that discovered the reefs was funded by the UW's Washington Sea Grant and the School of Oceanography and included faculty and undergraduates from the UW and University of Victoria.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Washington.

Genes of sea Sponge reveals the origins of Nervous System

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a group considered to be among the most ancient of all animals.

The findings are published in the June 6 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, a Public Library of Science journal.
"It turns out that sponges, which lack nervous systems, have most of the genetic components of synapses," said Todd Oakley, co-author and assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara.
"Even more surprising is that the sponge proteins have 'signatures' indicating they probably interact with each other in a similar way to the proteins in synapses of humans and mice," said Oakley. "This pushes back the origins of these genetic components of the nervous system to at or before the first animals much earlier than scientists had previously suspected."
When analyzing something as complex as the nervous system, it is difficult to know where to begin, explained Ken Kosik, senior author and co-director of UCSB's Neuroscience Research Institute, who holds the Harriman Chair in Neuroscience Research.
The first neurons and synapses appeared over 600 million years ago in "cnidarians," creatures known today as hydra, sea anemones, and jellyfish. By contrast, sponges, the oldest known animal group with living representatives, have no neurons or synapses. They are very simple animals with no internal organs.
"We look at the evolutionary period between sponges and cnidarians as the period when the nervous system came into existence, about 600 million years ago," said Kosik.
He explained that the research group made a list of all the genes expressed in a synapse in humans, since synapses epitomize the nervous system. Synapses are involved in cell communication, learning, and memory. Next, the researchers looked to see if any of the synapse genes were present in the sponge.
"That was when the surprise hit," said Kosik. "We found a lot of genes to make a nervous system present in the sponge." The research team also found evidence to show that these genes were working together in the sponge. The way two of the proteins interact, and their atomic structure, bear resemblance to the human nervous system.
"We found this mysterious unknown structure in the sponge, and it is clear that evolution was able to take this entire structure, and, with small modifications, direct its use toward a new function," said Kosik. "Evolution can take these 'off the shelf' components and put them together in new and interesting ways."
The research was made possible through the use of the sequenced sponge genome. The sponge genome has not yet been published, but it is available on-line. The sequencing was done by co-author Bernard M. Degnan, who was previously a postdoctoral fellow with Dan Morse, professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and director of UCSB's Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies. Degnan is now a professor in the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
This research on the genes of the sponge is highly interdisciplinary and includes computer scientists, biologists, and neuroscientists. The first author is Onur Sakarya, a graduate student at UCSB's Neuroscience Research Institute. He is also affiliated with UCSB's Department of Computer Science and the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. Co-author I-Fan Wang is also with the Neuroscience Research Institute as a postdoctoral fellow. Other co-authors include Bruce Tidor, professor, and Kathryn A. Armstrong, graduate student, both with the Biological Engineering Division and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additional co-authors from the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland include Maja Adamska, a postdoctoral fellow, and Marcin Adamski, a research assistant.
Philanthropist Harvey Karp provided some of the funding for the work.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of California - Santa Barbara.