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Isolation of a Rhodococcus Soil Bacterium that Produces a Strong Antibacterial Compound.

Rhodococci are notable for their ability to degrade a variety of natural and xenobiotic compounds. Recently, interest in Rhodococcus has increased due to the discovery of a large number of genes for secondary metabolism. Only a few secondary metabolites have been characterized from the rhodococci (including 3 recently described antibiotics). Twenty-four new Rhodococcus strains were isolated from soils in East Tennessee using acetonitrile enrichment culturing and identified using 16S rRNA analysis. Forty-seven Rhodococcus strains were screened for antibiotic production using a growth inhibition assay. One strain, MTM3W5.2, had 90% similarity to the Rhodococcus opacus 16S rRNA gene sequence and produced a large zone of inhibition against R. erythropolis and a large number of closely related species. The antimicrobial compound produced by MTM3W5.2 had a large MW of 911.5452 Da and acts much like a bacteriocin but no amino acids were detected in this molecule based on TLC analysis.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-2579
Date17 December 2011
CreatorsBorisova, Ralitsa Bogomilova
PublisherDigital Commons @ East Tennessee State University
Source SetsEast Tennessee State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceElectronic Theses and Dissertations
RightsCopyright by the authors.

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