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Diversity of culturable actinomycetes in hyper-arid soils of the Atacama Desert, Chile

Okoro, Chinyere K., Brown, Roselyn, Jones, Amanda L., Andrews, Barbara A., Asenjo, Juan A., Goodfellow, Michael, Bull, Alan T. (2009) Diversity of culturable actinomycetes in hyper-arid soils of the Atacama Desert, Chile. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek, 95 (2). pp. 121-133. ISSN 0003-6072. (doi:10.1007/s10482-008-9295-2) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:17852)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10482-008-9295-2

Abstract

The Atacama Desert presents one of the most extreme environments on Earth and we report here the first extensive isolations of actinomycetes from soils at various locations within the Desert. The use of selective isolation procedures enabled actinomycetes to be recovered from arid, hyper-arid and even extreme hyper-arid environments in significant numbers and diversity. In some cases actinomycetes were the only culturable bacteria to be isolated under the conditions of this study. Phylogenetic analysis and some phenotypic characterisation revealed that the majority of isolates belonged to members of the genera Amycolatopsis, Lechevalieria and Streptomyces, a high proportion of which represent novel centres of taxonomic variation. The results of this study support the view that arid desert soils constitute a largely unexplored repository of novel bacteria, while the high incidence of non-ribosomal peptide synthase genes in our isolates recommend them as promising material in screening for new bioactive natural products.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s10482-008-9295-2
Additional information: 1572-9699 (Electronic) Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Uncontrolled keywords: Actinobacteria/*classification/genetics/*isolation & purification Chile DNA, Bacterial/chemistry/genetics DNA, Ribosomal/chemistry/genetics Genes, rRNA *Genetic Variation Molecular Sequence Data Phylogeny RNA, Bacterial/genetics RNA, Ribosomal, 16S/genetics Sequence Analysis, DNA Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid *Soil Microbiology
Subjects: Q Science > QR Microbiology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Natural Sciences > Biosciences
Funders: Federal Government of Nigeria (https://ror.org/02zteat75)
Leverhulme Trust (https://ror.org/012mzw131)
Depositing User: Susan Davies
Date Deposited: 12 Aug 2009 09:36 UTC
Last Modified: 12 Jul 2022 10:39 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/17852 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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