Natural Products from Actinobacteria Associated with Fungus-Growing Termites

Abstract

The chemical analysis of insect-associated Actinobacteria has attracted the interest of natural product chemists in the past years as bacterial-produced metabolites are sought to be crucial for sustaining and protecting the insect host. The objective of our study was to evaluate the phylogeny and bioprospecting of Actinobacteria associated with fungus-growing termites. We characterized 97 Actinobacteria from the gut, exoskeleton, and fungus garden (comb) of the fungus-growing termite Macrotermes natalensis and used two different bioassays to assess their general antimicrobial activity. We selected two strains for chemical analysis and investigated the culture broth of the axenic strains and fungus-actinobacterium co-cultures. From these studies, we identified the previously-reported PKS-derived barceloneic acid A and the PKS-derived rubterolones. Analysis of culture broth yielded a new dichlorinated diketopiperazine derivative and two new tetracyclic lanthipeptides, named rubrominins A and B. The discussed natural products highlight that insect-associated Actinobacteria are highly prolific natural product producers yielding important chemical scaffolds urgently needed for future drug development programs.

Cryptic Chemical Communication: Secondary Metabolic Responses Revealed by Microbial Co‐culture

“…SMs are often involved in these interactions or appear as ar esult of them, such as in representative eventsd escribed in this review includingc hemical attack and defense, antiviral infection, predation and anti-hunting,r esource competition, chromosome remodeling,a nd expansion of the chemical space.I nr ecent years, tools fora nalyzing coculture systems have evolveds ignificantly,e specially advanced MSI methodologies (DESI, MALDI, [71] SIMS, [72] etc. In naturalm icrobec ommunities, SMs act as a" chemical language" and play important roles in the modulation of adaptive metabolic responses and competitive fitness.…”

“…In the laboratory co-culture system that imitates interspeciesi nteractions, each microbial species is no longer as ole protagonist,a nd they rely on chemical signals or physical contacts to identify and respond to friends and foes. SMs are often involved in these interactions or appear as ar esult of them, such as in representative eventsd escribed in this review includingc hemical attack and defense, antiviral infection, predation and anti-hunting,r esource competition, chromosome remodeling,a nd expansion of the chemical space.I nr ecent years, tools fora nalyzing coculture systems have evolveds ignificantly,e specially advanced MSI methodologies (DESI, MALDI, [71] SIMS, [72] etc. ), microfluidic devices and encapsulation techniques (e.g.,n anocultures, open microscale platform).…”

Isolation, Genomic and Metabolomic Characterization of Streptomyces tendae VITAKN with Quorum Sensing Inhibitory Activity from Southern India

“…Natural products of microbial origin have gained considerable attention because of their diverse chemical structures and bioactivity representing almost 35% of all present drugs [1,2]. Our current use of antibiotics poses great challenges among medical practitioners and researchers due to the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.…”

Environmental Sustainability: A Review of Termite Mound Soil Material and Its Bacteria

“…It has been reported that soil nutrients are accumulated in a termite mound, and their turnover plays a vital function in the ecosystem [13][14][15]. Research has revealed that termite mound soil is a "gold mine" of bacterial communities [16][17][18][19]. Termite mound soils could be used as a bulking agent [20] and for silo construction for short-term grain storage [21].…”