Symbiotic Understanding of Natural Sunscreens in Sponges (SUN-Sponge)

This project investigates how sponges and their microbial symbionts produce natural sunscreen compounds to cope with extreme solar radiation. The student will gain hands-on experience in DNA metabarcoding to characterize the microbiome of sponge holobionts—including Bacteria, Archaea, and microeukaryotes (e.g., diatoms, fungi). Training at TARJC Lab (KAUST) will cover library preparation, quality control, multiplexing, and sequencing, followed by bioinformatic and statistical analyses of the resulting data. Microbiome profiles will be integrated with existing pigment, metabolite, and isotopic data to investigate symbiont contributions to photoprotection. The student will gain experience across molecular, chemical, and ecological analyses while collaborating with PhD students and postdocs in the TARJC Lab.

A peer-reviewed publication presenting the experimental data, including pigment profiling integrated with microbial community composition, and highlighting key correlations across datasets.