Bioprospection of new compounds in pristine environments produced by bacterial isolates.

Abstract

Pristine environments can be defined as places with limited or no connections to anthropogenic activities [1], for example, karstic and marine caves, important landmarks of Natural and Cultural Heritage. Usually, these environments are exposed to extreme factors such as temperature, salinity, osmolarity, UV radiation, pressure, or pH, with values close to the limit of life. In these extreme environments, living organisms biosynthesize secondary metabolites with potential bioactivities giving them unique survival skills to grow in hostile conditions [2]. This study is being performed within the MICROCENO and TUBOLAN research projects and aims to search for new bioactive compounds produced by bacterial cultures, isolated from volcanic caves. Samples were collected from caves of Selvagens Islands (Madeira archipelago, Portugal) and Lanzarote Island (Canary archipelago, Spain). Cultivable microorganisms were previously isolated on different culture media and identified by sequencing 16S rDNA [3]. The antioxidant activity and antimicrobial action spectra against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria were evaluated. The obtained results suggest that selected bacterial isolates produce biologically active compounds with potential application in biotechnology and biomedicine. Additionally, screening assays testing the antitumor potential of culture supernatants of these bacterial isolates against a breast cancer epithelial cell line MDA-MB-231 and a colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line Caco-2 are ongoing. Bioprospection and discovery of new compounds represent an opportunity to implement new products obtained by fast and low-cost biotechnological processes as a novel green-safe and sustainable solutions.

Acknowledgements: The authors acknowledge to FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the projects UIDB/04449/2020, MICROCENO (PTDC/CTA-AMB/0608/2020), ART3mis (2022.07303.PTDC) and C. Salvador (DL 57/2016/CP1372/CT0019) to individual support. The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation is also acknowledged for funding the TUBOLAN project (PID2019-108672RJ-I00).

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