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Rapid characterisation of deep-sea actinomycetes for biotechnology screening programmes

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Michael Goodfellow, Emeritus Professor Alan Ward, Professor Alan Bull

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Abstract

A continual need in natural product discovery is dereplication, that is the ability to exclude previously tested microorganisms from screening programmes. Whole-cell fingerprinting techniques offer an ideal solution to this problem because of their rapidity and reproducibility, dependence on small samples, and automation. One such technique, Curie-point pyrolysis mass spectrometry (PyMS), has been deployed for the characterisation of a unique collection of actinomycetes recovered from Pacific Ocean sediments approximately 2000 to 6500 m below sea level. This paper addresses the question: to what extent are pyrogroups, defined on the basis of PyMS fingerprinting, related to classifications derived from more conventional microbial systematics? A collection of 44 randomly chosen deep-sea rhodococci were coded and subjected to a double-blind PyMS and numerical taxonomic (NT) analysis; the latter sorted the strains into clusters (taxospecies) using large sets of equally weighted penotypic data. At the end of the experiment the codes were disclosed and the NT classification shown to generate 6 homogeneous clusters corresponding to different deep-sea sites. The matching of these clusters with the resulting pyrogroups was very high with an overall congruence of nearly 98%. Thus, PyMS characterisation is directly ascribable to the phenotypic variation being sought for biotechnology screens. Moreover, the exquisite discriminatory power of PyMS readily revealed infraspecific diversity in these industrially important bacteria.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Ward AC; Goodfellow M; Bull AT; Colquhoun JA; Zulu J; Horikoshi K

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, International Journal of General and Molecular Microbiology

Year: 2000

Volume: 77

Issue: 4

Pages: 359-367

Print publication date: 01/01/2000

ISSN (print): 0003-6072

ISSN (electronic): 1572-9699

Publisher: Springer Netherlands

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1002627314735

DOI: 10.1023/A:1002627314735

PubMed id: 10959565

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