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Lookup NU author(s): Chinyere Okoro, Amanda Jones, Professor Michael Goodfellow, Professor Alan Bull
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The Atacama Desert presents one of the most extreme environments on Earth and we report here the first extensive isolations of actinomycetes from soils at various locations within the Desert. The use of selective isolation procedures enabled actinomycetes to be recovered from arid, hyper-arid and even extreme hyper-arid environments in significant numbers and diversity. In some cases actinomycetes were the only culturable bacteria to be isolated under the conditions of this study. Phylogenetic analysis and some phenotypic characterisation revealed that the majority of isolates belonged to members of the genera Amycolatopsis, Lechevalieria and Streptomyces, a high proportion of which represent novel centres of taxonomic variation. The results of this study support the view that arid desert soils constitute a largely unexplored repository of novel bacteria, while the high incidence of non-ribosomal peptide synthase genes in our isolates recommend them as promising material in screening for new bioactive natural products. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.
Author(s): Okoro CK, Brown R, Jones AL, Andrews BA, Asenjo JA, Goodfellow M, Bull AT
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, International Journal of General and Molecular Microbiology
Year: 2009
Volume: 95
Issue: 2
Pages: 121-133
ISSN (print): 0003-6072
ISSN (electronic): 1572-9699
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10482-008-9295-2
DOI: 10.1007/s10482-008-9295-2
PubMed id: 19052913
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