Luis A Maldonado
Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
Title: Morphological traits of some actinobacteria and their importance in the genomic era
Biography
Biography: Luis A Maldonado
Abstract
Microbes still are a vast and fully unexplored source for novel biologically active compounds and the actinobacteria subgroup (Gram positive bacteria with a 40 to 60% GC content) accounts for nearly 80% of the current medically employed antibiotics. Among the actinobacteria, members of the genus Salinispora are a promising source for novel compounds due to their unique ability to solely grow on the presence of sea water, a fact which supports their adeptness to the marine ecosystem. Salinispora are still difficult to isolate and characterize as strains usually undergo several chameleonic morphological states. In this study, a collection of 66 isolates recovered from a national resource and assigned to the genus Salinispora were screened
for their metabolic profiles coupled to both genotypic and morphological properties. Evaluation of the enzymatic profile of the strains for amylases, cellulases, lipases and proteases indicated that all the strains produced amylases and lipases whereas only 7.5% produced proteases; no cellulase activity was found. Also, the 66 strains showed antimicrobial activity against clinical isolates of Staphylococcus epidermidis. It is therefore, proposed that genome sequencing, single gene oriented phylogenies and morphological properties should be used in conjunction to construct a robust system to fully comprehend and exploit the biotechnological potential of Salinispora since several of the isolates from this study contained sequences not-related to previously reported Rifamycin clusters from Salinispora recovered from other regions of the world.