Abstract
The rapid emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics has urged the need to find novel bioactive compounds against resistant microorganisms. For that purpose, different strategies are being followed, one of them being exploring secondary metabolite production in microorganisms from uncommon sources. In this work, we have analyzed the genome of 12 Streptomyces sp. strains of the CS collection isolated from the surface of leaf-cutting ants of the Attini tribe and compared them to four Streptomyces model species and Pseudonocardia sp. Ae150A_Ps1, which shares the ecological niche with those of the CS collection. We used a combination of phylogenetics, bioinformatics and dereplication analysis to study the biosynthetic potential of our strains. 51.5% of the biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) predicted by antiSMASH were unknown and over half of them were strain-specific, making this strain collection an interesting source of putative novel compounds.
Highlights
In the current scenario of emergence of new pathogens and the rapidly increasing rate of resistant bacteria to clinically used antibiotics, the need for compounds with novel bioactivities has arisen as an urgent worldwide concern [1]
The benchmarking universal single-copy orthologs (BUSCO) analysis based on 124 genes validated the completeness of the genome assemblies (Figure S1)
To identify a possible relationship between the ecological niche and secondary metabolite production profile, we studied the Streptomycete strains clustered into two different groups: one comprising the twelve CS strains and the other with the rest of the reference strains (Figure 2D)
Summary
In the current scenario of emergence of new pathogens and the rapidly increasing rate of resistant bacteria to clinically used antibiotics, the need for compounds with novel bioactivities has arisen as an urgent worldwide concern [1]. In the period from 1940 to 1970 (known as the golden age of antibiotic discovery) the scientific community made a huge effort looking for compounds with antibiotic activity that could be used in human therapies This led to the discovery of a great number of novel natural products such as the tetracyclines or vancomycin, but his enormous success had as a collateral effect the depletion of the traditional bioactive metabolite sources. To solve this problem, new approaches have been followed, mainly focused on the isolation of antibiotic-producing organisms from under-explored environments (e.g., extreme habitats) or new ecological niches (e.g., symbiosis with another organisms), the genetic manipulation of the known producers or the chemical modification of already known compounds [3,4]
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