Microbes associated with marine sponges play significant roles in host physiology. Remarkable levels of microbial diversity have been observed in sponges worldwide through both culture-dependent and culture-independent studies. Most studies have focused on the structure of the bacterial communities in sponges and have involved sponges sampled from shallow waters. Here, we used pyrosequencing of...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the stain removal ability of melamine sponge before aesthetic tooth whitening in extracted teeth. METHODS Melamine sponge of thickness 40 mm was compressed and the destruction of the partition wall structure during the compression process was examined under a stereoscopic microscope. An extracted human tooth was cleaned by normal polishing or with melamine sponge for...

A combination of transplant experiments and provision of recruitment surfaces has been initiated to determine the degree to which differences in sponge diversity and species composition at two Twin Cays sites, Hidden Creek and Sponge Haven, reflect differences in abiotic factors, ecological interactions, and recruitment history. This report contains the first stages of this project. The Hidden ...

Ecological studies have rarely been performed at the community level across a large biogeographic region. Sponges are now the primary habitat-forming organisms on Caribbean coral reefs. Recent species-level investigations have demonstrated that predatory fishes (angelfishes and some parrotfishes) differentially graze sponges that lack chemical defenses, while co-occurring, palatable species hea...

Microbial communities of the sponges Callyspongia sp. from Hong Kong and Callyspongia plicifera (Porifera: Demospongia) from the Bahamas were compared with each other and with those from reference substrata using a terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis. The least number of bacterial ribotypes and bacterial isolates were retrieved from Bahamas reference and sponge s...

The roles of oncogenic miRNAs are widely recognized in many cancers. Inhibition of single miRNA using antagomiR can efficiently knock-down a specific miRNA. However, the effect is transient and often results in subtle phenotype, as there are other miRNAs contribute to tumorigenesis. Here we report a multi-potent miRNA sponge inhibiting multiple miRNAs simultaneously. As a model system, we targe...

Poribacteria were found in nine sponge species belonging to six orders of Porifera from three oceans. Phylogenetic analysis revealed four distinct poribacterial clades, which contained organisms obtained from several different geographic regions, indicating that the distribution of poribacteria is cosmopolitan. Members of divergent poribacterial clades were also found in the same sponge species...

We have developed crosslinked salmon-derived atelocollagen (SC) sponge, which has a denaturation temperature of 47°C. Sixty-four knees of 32 mature rabbits were randomly divided into 4 groups after creating an osteochondral defect in the femoral trochlea. Defects in Groups I, II, and III were filled with the crosslinked SC sponge, the crosslinked porcine collagen (PC) sponge, and the non-crossl...

Genomic mining revealed one major nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) phylogenetic cluster in 12 marine sponge species, one ascidian, an actinobacterial isolate and seawater. Phylogenetic analysis predicts its taxonomic affiliation to the actinomycetes and hydroxy-phenyl-glycine as a likely substrate. Additionally, a phylogenetically distinct NRPS gene cluster was discovered in the microbial...

Sponge iron (DRI) due to the high surface area, often shows a high tendency to re-oxidation and at some cases spontaneous combustion (autoignition). In this work, re-oxidation behavior and autoignition of sponge iron, produced from different types of iron ore has been investigated. Isothermal and non-isothermal re-oxidation experiments were carried out on each type of DRI and their autoignition...