Enhancement of Antibiotic Production in Marine Bacteria

T. Prem Anand^1*, C. Chellaram¹, R. Sivakumar² and C. Felicia Shanthini³

1Department of Biomedical Engineering, 2Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Vel Tech Multitech Engineering College, Chennai- 600 062, India. 3Department of Marine Science and Coastal Resource Management, Madras Christian College, Chennai, India.  

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/1136

ABSTRACT: Marine microbes use a variety of strategies to colonize both animate as well as inanimate surfaces in marine environment. The competition among microbes to colonize surfaces acts as a potent selective force. One of the important strategies these microbes use is the secretion of antimicrobial compounds, which helps to inhibit the growth of the competitors. Bacterium - bacterium antagonistic interactions involving antibiotics are well documented in soils but work relating to this in marine environment is scanty. In this present study 75 antibiotic producing bacterial strains were challenged to enhance the production of antibiotics by these strains. Enhancement of antibiotic production by the producer strain was carried out by inducing the producer strains with heat killed and live Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells. Out of the 75 induced strains 21 strains were found to enhance their antibiotic production. In the search for novel antibiotics from marine bacteria, these strategy can be used to enhance production of the potent compounds to overcome the problem of low yield to a certain degree.

KEYWORDS: Marine bacteria; Antibiotics; Secondary metabolites; Enhancement; Epibiosis

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