Cellulose is not degraded in the tunic of the edible ascidian Halocynthia roretzi contracting soft tunic syndrome.
Soft tunic syndrome is a fatal disease in the edible ascidian Halocynthia roretzi, causing serious damage to ascidian aquaculture in Korea and Japan. In diseased individuals, the tunic, an integumentary extracellular matrix of ascidians, softens and eventually tears. This is an infectious disease caused by the kinetoplastid flagellate Azumiobodo hoyamushi. However, the mechanism of tunic softening remains unknown. Because cellulose fibrils are the main component of the tunic, we compared the contents and structures of cellulose in healthy and diseased tunics by means of biochemical quantification and X-ray diffractometry. Unexpectedly, the cellulose contents and structures of cellulose microfibrils were almost the same regardless of the presence or absence of the disease. Therefore, it is unlikely that thinning of the microfibrils occurred in the softened tunic, because digestion should have resulted in decreases in crystallinity index and crystallite size. Moreover, cellulase was not detected in pure cultures of A. hoyamushi in biochemical and expressed sequence tag analyses. These results indicate that cellulose degradation does not occur in the softened tunic.
Department of Biomaterial Science, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Science, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan.
Satoshi
S
Kimura
Kei
K
Nakayama
Masahisa
M
Wada
Ung-Jin
UJ
Kim
Kaoru
K
Azumi
Takao
T
Ojima
Akino
A
Nozawa
Shin-Ichi
S
Kitamura
Euichi
E
Hirose
D000818:Animals; D002482:Cellulose / Q000737:chemistry*; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D016830:Kinetoplastida / Q000502:physiology*; D014561:Urochordata / Q000469:parasitology*
D002482:Cellulose