Abstract
Sorangium cellulosum, a cellulolytic myxobacterium, is capable of producing a variety of bioactive secondary metabolites. Epothilones are anti-eukaryotic secondary metabolites produced by some S.cellulosum strains. In this study, we analyzed interactions between 12 strains of S.cellulosum consisting of epothilone-producers and non-epothilone producers isolated from two distinct soil habitats. Co-cultivation on filter papers showed that different Sorangium strains inhibited one another's growth, whereas epothilone production by the producing strains changed markedly for most (73%) pairwise mixtures. Using a quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we demonstrated that the expression of epothilone biosynthetic genes in the epothilone producers typically changed significantly when these bacteria were mixed with non-producing strains. The results indicated that intraspecies interactions between different S.cellulosum strains not only inhibited the growth of partners, but also could change epothilone production.
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