Culturable diversity of bacterial endophytes associated with medicinal plants of the Western Ghats, India

Webster, Gordon and Mullins, Alex J. and Cunningham-Oakes, Edward and Renganathan, Arun and Aswathanarayan, Jamuna Bai and Mahenthiralingam, Eshwar and Vittal, Ravishankar Rai (2020) Culturable diversity of bacterial endophytes associated with medicinal plants of the Western Ghats, India. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 96 (9). ISSN 1574-6941

Text Gordon Webster.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (4MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Bacterial endophytes are found in the internal tissues of plants and have intimate associations with their host. However, little is known about the diversity of medicinal plant endophytes (ME) or their capability to produce specialised metabolites that may contribute to therapeutic properties. We isolated 75 bacterial ME from 24 plant species of the Western Ghats, India. Molecular identification by 16S rRNA gene sequencing grouped MEs into 13 bacterial genera, with members of Gammaproteobacteria and Firmicutes being the most abundant. To improve taxonomic identification, 26 selected MEs were genome sequenced and average nucleotide identity (ANI) used to identify them to the species-level. This identified multiple species in the most common genus as Bacillus. Similarly, identity of the Enterobacterales was also distinguished within Enterobacter and Serratia by ANI and core-gene analysis. AntiSMASH identified non-ribosomal peptide synthase, lantipeptide and bacteriocin biosynthetic gene clusters (BGC) as the most common BGCs found in the ME genomes. A total of five of the ME isolates belonging to Bacillus, Serratia and Enterobacter showed antimicrobial activity against the plant pathogen Pectobacterium carotovorum. Using molecular and genomic approaches we have characterised a unique collection of endophytic bacteria from medicinal plants. Their genomes encode multiple specialised metabolite gene clusters and the collection can now be screened for novel bioactive and medicinal metabolites.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	endophytic bacteria; antimicrobials; Bacillus; medicinal plants; bacterial genomes; biosynthetic gene clusters
Subjects:	B Life Science > Microbiology
Divisions:	Department of > Microbiology
Depositing User:	Mr Umendra uom
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2021 06:28
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2021 06:28
URI:	http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/id/eprint/15524

Actions (login required)

View Item