Basic HTML Version
International Journal of Marine Science 2013, Vol.3, No.37, 295-305
http://ijms.sophiapublisher.com
296
means of their collagenous skeleton (Garrone, 1999;
Garrone, 1985).
Successful applications of collagens
from various terrestrial sources is as vast as in the
treatment of hypertension, urinary incontinence, pain
associated with osteoarthritis, wound healing, tissue
engineering for human organ implants etc. However,
the outbreaks of contagious diseases through the
highly antigenic collagens could lead to health
complications like BSE and TSE (Swatschek et al.,
2002). Hence, current researchers are targeting safer
collagen from nature, more importantly from marine
sources, as life originated from ocean. In this context,
marine sponges are the ideal role models for several
collagen explorations in order to meet the recent
medical demands of human beings.
Despite of having an attractively simple basic
organization that remains fairly constant throughout
all species, they do manage to show a great variety of
forms and shapes to give around 11,000 known
species of sponges worldwide among which, only
8500 are considered valid (Van Soest et al., 2012).
More than 300 species of sponges have been recorded
from Gulf of Mannar (GoM) and Palk Bay region
located on the southeast coast of India, which is
considered to be one of the hotspots for marine
sponges in the world (Venkataraman and Wafar, 2005).
GoM possess a coastline of 315 km starting from the
pilgrim town of Rameshwaram and ending at
industrial town of Tuticorin. Taking their remarkable
biomedical and pharmacological applications into
account (Chairman et al., 2012), preliminary studies
on the Demosponges from GoM were carried out in
our laboratory. In the perspective of the microscopic
and biochemical analyses, four marine sponges
Fasciospongia cavernosa
,
Hyattella cribriformis
,
Dysidea fragilis
and
Callyspongia fibrosa
were taken
into consideration as all of them are prominent at the
shallow and deep collection sites of GoM. The present
paper depicts an over view of the biochemical content
including the collagen of collected demosponges. This
is the latest report of listing recently available sponge
species in GoM area, where specific focus has been
given to the macromolecular and ultrastructural
differences between the experimental sponges for
emphasizing the importance of these collagenated
organisms, although intensive studies on collagen
from
Ircinia fusca
were studied previously by our
group. Present study may prove to be the ideal vault
for further chemicobiological explorations on
remaining available marine sponges in the same area;
and also for the isolation, purification and analysis of
therapeutically important, safer protein molecules like
collagens from different sponge species of GoM.
1 Materials and Methods
1.1 Sampling
Marine sponges were collected from the shallow and
sub-tidal regions between 15 to 20 feet by skin-diving
during our collection trips from the year 2006 to 2009
at Mandapam coast, Gulf of Mannar (Lat. 9°5′ N,
Long. 79°5′ E), India. Immediately after collection,
the samples were frozen and kept at -20
℃
until the
analytical work was started. Few sponge specimens
were placed into sampling bags under water to avoid
contact with air and transported to the laboratory. The
voucher specimens kept in small zip lock bags were
submitted to National Institute of Oceanography
(NIO), Goa for depository purpose and were identified
by Dr. P.A. Thomas, Vizhinjam Research Centre of
Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute
(ICAR-CMFRI), Vizhinjam, Thiruvananthapuram,
India. The identification of these Demosponges was
based on the classical and recent bibliography. Four
marine sponges belonging to four families viz.,
Thorectidae [
Fasciospongia cavernosa
(Schmidt,
1862)], Spongiidae
[
Hyattella cribriformis
(Hyatt,
1877)], Callyspongiidae [
Callyspongia (Cladochalina)
fibrosa
(Ridley & Dendy, 1886)] and Dysideidae
[
Dysidea fragilis
(Montagu, 1818)] of the class
Demospongiae were chosen for the present study,
based on the available information on their possible
ecological
significance
and
were
analyzed
microscopically and biochemically. All the reagents
used in the present study are of analytical grade and
used without further purification.
1.2 Gross study of the sponges
Sponge specimens collected from the sea were
photographed digitally (SONY) and with a CCD
camera (SONY CCD IRIS, model no. SSC-M370CE,
Japan) attached to a computer.
1.3 Microscopic Study
Video microscopy
Video microscopy was employed to examine the form
and arrangement of skeletal components in intact