Biomedicine

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: Sea urchins are commonly found along the rocky ocean floor in both shallow and deeper water and found inhabiting coral reefs. Sea urchins are omnivorous animals and eat both plant and animal matter. They mainly feed on coral and rocks along with decomposing matter. Stomopneustes variolaris species shows a remarkably patchy distribution and it can be pretty abundant where they are found. They can be encountered along the east African coast to the Philippines on rock and damaged reefs, most often in shallow waters but never too close to wave action. Aim of the study was to isolate and identify the fungal pathogens inhabiting in sea urchins and their molecular characterization using ITS sequencing method..
Materials and Methods: In the present study, sea urchin (Stomopneustes variolaris) samples were collected from St. Mary’s Island, Malpe beach, west coast of India and tried to isolate some fungi as they are edible worldwide. Gut, gonad and coelomic fluids were separated from the sea urchin and subjected to isolation of different fungal forms.
Results: Four morphologically different species of fungi were isolated and identified as Cladosporium cladosporiodes SCS10 (coelomic fluid), Corynespora cassiicola ABS48 and Cladosporium oxysporum CBR23 (gonad) Cladosporium colombiae DFFSCS017 (gut). Fungal species were confirmed based on the morphological feature and through molecular characterization approach using ITS sequencing. The genomic DNA of fungi was extracted and a large-scale reaction of 100μl was set up using specific primers. This product was then purified and sequenced. The results obtained on sequencing were uploaded on the NCBI website and BLAST program was run to identify the fungi.
Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first report to investigate the diversity of fungi from sea urchin in the St. Mary’s Island, Malpe beach, west coast of India.