Vibrio splendidus

Classification

Describe the appearance, habitat, etc. of the organism, and why you think it is important.

Genome Structure

Describe the size and content of the genome. How many chromosomes? Circular or linear? Other interesting features? What is known about its sequence?

Cell Structure, Metabolism and Life Cycle

Interesting features of cell structure; how it gains energy; what important molecules it produces.

Ecology and Pathogenesis

Habitat; symbiosis; biogeochemical significance; contributions to environment.
If relevant, how does this organism cause disease? Human, animal, plant hosts? Virulence factors, as well as patient symptoms.

Ecology

Vibrio splendidus a planktonic vibrio species found in oceanic environment. It is a facultative anaerobe that has strains that have been found to be culturable in a lab environment. It has been found to be extremely prevalent in the gulf coast where it is able to be sampled out of most open water in the gulf. V. splendidus strains have been found that emit a sort of bioluminescence that is visible in high cell concentration areas. A study has found that V. splendidus and Vibrio harveyi are so closely related that a site specific probe for V. harveyi was also found to hybridize with V. splendidus, although the true phylogenetic relationship between these two organisms is still unknown.

{It has been found to kill some vertebrates.}

Vibrio Spendidus is a bioluminating organism. This means that the light it emits is not actual emitting a lot of thermal radiation. It is commonly accepted that nearly 90% of marine animals emit some sort of bioluminescence, so just that fact could show how common this organism may be in aquatic environments. This light that is emitted by the organism can offer many benefits to any animal that chooses to uptake this microbe and associate it with itself. It is speculated that the light could be used as an attractant luring prey in, as a deterrent keeping predators away or even simply a light source that allows the animal to see things that reflect the certain wavelength of light that V. splendiduus is emitting. It is still not very well known what else this organism may be doing in marine life.

{Emits bioluminescence}

Pathology

The Vibrio splendidus metallo protease gene vsm is hypothesized to directly contribute to this organisms toxic effect on oysters . Other research is attempting to determine the toxic effects of this gene product on bivalves and to further determine its pathogenic ability (Le Roux 2006). {Vibriosis}

{Kills some invertebrates}

Significance

    The creation of biofuels and renewable energy resources by microbial fermentation is becoming a prominent area of research.   The product yield and efficiency of processes is important for the development of such biofuels.  The common biofuel substrates, corn and sugar present issues with efficient production and competition with the food market supply.  Current microbial technology is unable to address the cost and complex metabolic requirements to make use of the sugars released from recalcitrant polysaccharides (Stephanopolos).  Biomass products such as seaweed could potentially be used as such a substrate if a sustainable method was developed for the release and metabolism of such sugars from the substrate (Adam 2012).  Brown macroalgae has the potential to be used for the creation of biofuels (Somerville 2010).  Brown macroalgae does not compete with food crops for the use of landmass, fertilizer or fresh water and this has no major influence on the production of food crops (Roesijadi).  This macroalgae does not contain lignin and its sugars can be released by crushing or milling (Adam 2012). It is estimated that 59 dry metric tons/ha of this substrate can be produced per year with an optimal yield of 0.254 ethanol/weight of dry algae (Adam 2012).  The estimated bio-ethanol activity from this crop is 19,000 liters/ha/year  (Adam 2012).  This ethanol yield is 2x greater than that of sugar and 5x than that of corn (Adam 2012). 

The most abundant sugars in brown macroalgae is alginate, mannitol and glucan (Adam 2012). The full potential for the use of alginate has not been realized because of lack of processes to Current technologies have not developed a method for the microbial metabolism of alginate and thus, the full potential of this substrate has not been realized. Vibrio splendidus contains a 30 kilo-base pair fragment which may codes for the transport and metabolism of alginate (Adam 2012). Direct cloning of the fragment and reconstruction of the pathway was done creating a fosmid library using fragments of the Vibrio splendidus genomic DNA coding for the alginate metabolism pathway (pGAL) and transforming it into E. coli. It was reported that this engeneered organism could produce ethanol at levels over 80% of the estimated maximum yield (Adam 2012).

References

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=PMID%3A%2020705851%20 Somerville C, Youngs H, Taylor C, Davis SC, Long SP. “Feedstocks for lignocellulosic biofuels”. “Science”. 2010 329(5993):790-2.] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=PMID%3A%2015212292%20 Gay M, Berthe FC, Le Roux F. “Screening of Vibrio isolates to develop an experimental infection model in the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas.” “Diseases of Aquatic Organisms”.

2004 Apr 21;59(1):49-56.] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=PMID%3A%2017122399%20 Le Roux F, Binesse J, Saulnier D, Mazel D. “Construction of a Vibrio splendidus mutant lacking the metalloprotease gene vsm by use of a novel counterselectable suicide vector.””Applied Environmental Microbiology”. 2007 Feb;73(3):777-84.]

Wargacki AJ, Leonard E, Win MN, Regitsky DD, Santos CN, Kim PB, Cooper SR, Raisner RM, Herman A, Sivitz AB, Lakshmanaswamy A, Kashiyama Y, Baker D, Yoshikuni Y. “An engineered microbial platform for direct biofuel production from brown macroalgae.”“Science”. 2012 Jan 20;335(6066):308-13.

Stephanopoulos G. “Challenges in engineering microbes for biofuels production.”“Science”. 2007 Feb 9;315(5813):801-4.

       Shin Y, Liu J, Wang LQ, Nie Z, Samuels WD, Fryxell GE, Exarhos GJ. “Ordered Hierarchical Porous Materials: Towards Tunable Size- and Shape-Selective Microcavities in Nanoporous Channels The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC06-76RL0 1830. This work is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy.” “Angewandte Chemie International Edition”. 2000 Aug 4;39(15):2702-2707.

Author

Page authored by _____, student of Prof. Jay Lennon at Michigan State University.

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