Antarctic actinobacteria, which can be isolated from both soils and marine sediments, demonstrate a wide range of antimicrobial activities as well as significant biosynthetic potential as the producers of biologically active compounds. However, the actinobacterial diversity of the Antarctic region has not yet been sufficiently studied. The present study sought to examine the diversity and antibacterial activity of culturable actinobacteria isolated from the rhizosphere soil of Deschampsia antarctica (É. Desv.), which was collected from Galindez Island, Maritime Antarctic.Among the actinobacteria isolated using a 16S rRNA gene sequence-based phylogenetic analysis process, five genera, namely Streptomyces, Micromonospora, Umezawaea, Kribbella and Micrococcus, were identified. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to describe the isolation and initial characterisation of members of the genus Umezawaea from the Antarctic. The isolated actinobacteria were assayed to determine their activity against grampositive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria and yeast. Among the isolated strains, only 30.2% were able to inhibit the growth of at least one of the tested pathogens. The polymerase chain reaction-based screening of the biosynthetic genes revealed the presence of type I polyketide synthases (65.1%), type II polyketide synthases (25.6%) and nonribosomal peptide synthetases (9.3%) in the actinobacteria strains. The examination of the sensitivity/resistance to antibiotics profile of the actinobacteria strains revealed their high sensitivity in relation to the tested antibiotics. Taken together, the results showed that Antarctic actinobacteria demonstrate potential as the producers of natural bioactive compounds, which means that they represent a valuable prospect for further studies.

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