Genotypic, phenotypic, and pathogenic characterization of the soil isolated Acinetobacter courvalinii

Abstract

Most of the human gene homologs are found in Caenorhabditis elegans. As a wide variety of micro-organisms present in the environment is pathogens, so, C. elegans could be a useful model to track future infectious disease. With this knowledge, in this study, we isolated Acinetobacter courvalinii from the soil and characterized its pathogenicity for the first time. For the isolation, we used Glucose-Yeast extract-Ethanol-Calcium carbonate medium. To this aim, we evaluated the resistivity of bacteria against several stressful microenvironments. As we observed, A. courvalinii JP_A1001 shown highly tolerance against the acidic environment (pH 3-7), resistant against up to 0.2% of phenol content, and survived in the medium supplemented with 0.3% of bile salt. In addition, the bacteria were also resistant against several antibiotics showing the property of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Moreover, the isolated bacteria have shown the biofilm formation ability within 60 h. Further, we found that incubation of C. elegans with A. courvalinii JP_A1001 decreased the body movement and increased the free radical generation which remarkably influenced the life expectancy of C. elegans compared to E. coli OP50. Therefore, we concluded that A. courvalinii JP_A1001 found in the soil could be a future threat as a pathogen to public health.