Microbial diversity and biotechnological potential of bacteria isolated from Antarctica

Abstract

Antarctic marine ecosystem is a unique and extreme environment that remains underexplored. The microbial diversity of sea water and sediment Antarctica and glaciers and lakes, has been recently revealed by examining libraries of clones 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Several sequences have been known at the rate heterotrophic closely related to the cultivated species, including members of Gamma-and Alphaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chlamydiales, Verrucomicrobiales and Gram-positive bacteria. Studies of sediment microbial communities that inhabit the Arctic and Antarctic also reported a predominance of Gammaproteobacteria. However, few studies have investigated the associations between micro-organisms and marine invertebrates from Antarctica and explored its biotechnological potential. In recent years new secondary metabolites have been isolated from bacteria associated with marine environment and the antibacterial and anticancer activities were described. However, there are few studies involving bacteria and secondary metabolites from antiviral activity, but this activity is no less important than the others, especially to animal health. Recently, new micro-organisms of interest and veterinary public health have emerged, and many others featuring character re-emerging. Thus, several drugs have been approved for the treatment of bacterial and viral infections, most of them being the result of the synthesis of analogous substances to nucleotides, providing the development of resistance to these drugs. For this reason, the current interest in discovery of new compounds is increasing. The results of this project will contribute to the knowledge of the diversity of bacteria associated with marine macro-organismos inhabitants of Antarctica. Moreover, investigation of the phylogenetic relationships of isolates using a polyphasic taxonomy will allow the identification of species already described, and perhaps new species associated with the marine environment resulting in the understanding of the ecological relationships among micro-organism in the host environment poorly explored. Further, from the viewpoint of biotechnology, the screening of genes with biotechnological potential may indicate possible new compounds produced by bacteria that inhabit the Antarctic environment and functional assays also will select among isolates potential antimicrobial and antiviral agents. Finally, the deposit of micro-organisms in CBMAI allow access to this unexplored diversity for future projects aimed at bioprospecting of compounds of industrial interest, such as antimicrobial, anticancer, immunosuppressant and enzymes. (AU)