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Abstract

Members of three putatively novel Streptomyces species, designated Streptomyces groups A, B and C, were repeatedly isolated from environmental samples taken from four hay meadow plots at Cockle Park Experimental Farm, Northumberland (UK). Representative isolates were found to have properties consistent with their classification in the genus Streptomyces and were recovered in three taxa using different phenotypic criteria, namely morphological and pigmentation properties, rapid enzyme tests, and whole-organism fatty acid, protein electrophoretic and pyrolysis mass-spectrometric data. The isolates were rapidly characterised as three taxonomic groups using pyrolysis mass spectrometry. The three taxa were also distinguished from one another and from validly described species of Streptomyces using rapid enzyme tests based on the fluorophores 7-amino-methylcoumarin and 4-methylumbelliferone, and computer-assisted identification procedures. The results indicate that selective isolation and rapid characterisation of streptomycetes using pyrolysis mass spectrometry provide a practical way of determining the phenotypic species diversity of streptomycetes in natural habitats. The experimental data also indicate that representative sampling of cultivable streptomycetes from soil can best be achieved using a multi-step extraction procedure coupled with the use of selective isolation procedures.

Biosystematics of alkaliphilic streptomycetes isolated from seven locations across a beach and dune sand system

“…It is evident from the 16S rRNA gene sequence data that many of the alkaliphilic streptomycetes isolated from the beach and dune sand system at Ross Links form a novel heterogeneous group. This point is underlined by the assignment of the isolates to 49 multimembered and 114 singlemembered colour-groups as it has been shown repeatedly that streptomycete groups based on aerial spore mass, colony reverse and diffusible pigment colours on oatmeal agar, and on the formation of melanin pigments on peptone-yeast extract-iron agar are predictive; strains taken to represent such taxa key out to either previously described or novel Streptomyces species based on computer-assisted identification (Goodfellow and Haynes 1984;Williams and Vickers 1988;Atalan et al 2000), Curie-point pyrolysis mass spectrometric (Atalan et al 2000) and polyphasic taxonomic procedures (Manfio et al 2003). In general, members of the multimembered colour groups were isolated from single locations suggesting that they may be spatially distributed across the beach and dune sand system.…”

Can whole genome analysis refine the taxonomy of the genusRhodococcus?

“…Environmental source Soil [202] Pulmonary diseases/insect symbiont Insects [19,264,265] sources are phylogenetically very diverse [41][42][43][44]. It also appears that R. rhodnii is more closely related to the genus Tsukamurella than it is to other rhodococci.…”

Streptomyces cocklensis sp. nov., a dioxamycin-producing actinomycete

“…Strain BK168 T was isolated from a plate of starch-casein agar (Küster & Williams, 1964), supplemented with cycloheximide and nystatin (each at 25 µg ml −1 ), which had been inoculated with a pre-heated soil suspension (55 °C for 20 min) and incubated at 28 °C for 21 days. The soil sample had been collected from Palace Leas meadow hay plot 6 (Atalan et al , 2000) at Cockle Park Experimental Farm, Northumberland, UK (national grid reference NZ 200913). The organism was maintained on oatmeal agar slopes [International Streptomyces Project (ISP) medium 3; Shirling & Gottlieb, 1966] at 4 °C and as a mixture of mycelial fragments and spores in 20 % (v/v) glycerol at −20 °C.…”