Development of a screening method for identifying potential aminoglycosides producers from a collection of environmental Actinobacteria

Abstract

Nature represents an important source of molecules with relevant applications in agriculture, industrial and health. Although many efforts have been performed in the identification of new natural products, target, and efficient strategies to select NPs producers are still needed. Previous studies have shown that the intrinsic resistance of Actinobacteria that produce antimicrobial agents could be used as a systematic approach for the detection antibiotics producers. Therefore, the aim of this work was to test different resistance, molecular and bioinformatic analysis as selection criteria to identify possible candidates to produce aminoglycoside antibiotics. This is the first approach developed for this class of antibiotics. we generated a collection of environmental strains and standardized some conditions using model strain producers. We could standardize the procedure for molecular screening in model producers, but we did not find evidence of aminoglycoside producers for the environmental collection, this fact supported by resistance and bioinformatic analysis. According to this, an improved strategy was proposed combining field-directed sampling, an improved molecular screening, as well as the selection of bioinformatic tools with high detection sensibility to AGs BGCs. Additionally, a huge diversity of BGCs from other chemical families was observed according to the genome mining analysis. These results represent an opportunity to continue exploring the chemical diversity in Actinobacteria isolated from unique regions that can be studied as well as being the inspiration for the development of new screening protocols.