Bacteria keep coral healthy
Diseases that strike corals may be linked to the loss of an antibiotic defence system used by bacteria living in the mucous coating of corals.
Kim Ritchie and Danielle Drumm of the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, measured the antimicrobial activity of bacteria collected from the mucus of the coral Montastrea faveolata. They sampled the coral from both healthy and diseased reefs and found that bacteria from the healthy reef showed antibiotic activity against the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, while none from the disease-prone reef did so.
This is the first demonstration of antibiotic activity…
