Abstract
The aim of this study was to isolate bacteria from sea grass, Halodule uninervis collected from the coastal area of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and to screen them for antifungal and enzymatic activities. We have isolated 162 rhizo and endophytic bacteria from soil, roots, and leaves of the sea grass. Antifungal screening of isolated bacteria revealed 19 strains (11.7%) capable to inhibit growth of four pathogenic fungi, Pythium ultimum, Phytophthora capsici, pyricularia oryzae, and Rhizoctonia solani in an in vitro assay. Taxonomic and phylogenetic analyses on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed 97–99.9% sequence identity to recognized species. Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Jeotgalicoccus, and Planococcus, within the Phylum Firmicutes, Kocuria, Arthrobacter, Ornithinimicrobium and Corynebacterium (Actinobacteria), Sulfitobacter, Roseivivax, Ruegeria (α-Proteobacteria), Moraxella, and Vibrio (γ-Proteobacteria), were isolated. Strains belong to Phylum Firmicutes remain dominant antagonistic bacteria in this study. Further hydrolytic enzyme production was determined for these antagonistic bacteria. Our results demonstrated that the sea grass represents an important source of diverse antagonistic bacteria capable of producing antifungal metabolite.
Highlights
Marine environment is a reservoir of many novel bioactive compounds
To determine the rhizo and endophytic bacterial population in marine grass, H. uninervis, and soil attached with soil, roots, and leaves samples, have been used for isolation of bacteria
A total of 162 morphologically distinct bacterial strains were isolated from rhizo and endosphere of H. uninervis, growing in the coastal area of Jeddah during Nov 2015
Summary
Marine environment is a reservoir of many novel bioactive compounds. Until now, thousand of unique compounds have been isolated from marine environment (Ireland et al 1993; Newman and Cragg 2004; Hu et al 2015). Many studies have reported the antagonistic bacterial communities associated with marine plants suggesting their beneficial role in plants (Shin et al 2007; Bibi et al 2012). Marine bacteria are distributed widely in marine areas from intertidal to deep sea and in extreme places such as hydrothermal and polar sea This describes their implausible tendency to adapt to different environment by developing different approaches to survive. These approaches include their ability to produce different metabolic pathways in competitive environment of sea (Harvey 2008) This is the reason that most of the marine antimicrobial compounds previously reported are originated from marine host surface-attached bacteria (Shin et al 2007; Chen et al 2012)
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