Highlights
- Microbiological study for marble cave in Canada
- Microbial diversity (cultural-based approach) of marble cave of Canada
- Anti-MDR activity from marble cave isolates
Abstract
Bacteria and archaea thrive in terrestrial subsurface environments because of their unique physiology. Over time, these unique microorganisms may have adapted to possess specialized metabolic pathways that sustain their continued existence in caves, one of harshest environments on earth. The present study elucidates cultivation based microbial diversity of the cave sediments and wall scrapings collected from seven different locations in Raspberry Rising Cave located in the Columbia Mountain Range, British Columbia, Canada. A total of 103 cultivable bacteria from the cave were isolated on various agar media including R2A, Hickey-Tresner, and DifcoTM Actinomycetes Isolation agar media. Taxonomical phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene of the bacterial isolates identified three major phyla: Proteobacteria (Class: Gammaproteobacteria) (51.45%), Actinobacteria (43.68%) and Bacteroidetes (3.88%). Among them, the major genus was Pseudomonas (48.54%) followed by Rhodococcus (39.80%) and Flavobacterium (3.88%). The genus Janthinobacterium and Arthrobacter contributed about 2.91% each, of the total population. Noteworthy, 0.99% were recognized as endophytic Proteobacteria. Furthermore, these bacterial isolates were evaluated for their potential antimicrobial activities against the multidrug resistant bacterial strains. Two bacterial isolates (RRC23, RRC75) showed antimicrobial activities against multi-drug resistant (MDR) Escherichia coli #15-318 while RRC48 exhibited against methicillin resistant (MRSA) Staphylococcus aureus. The isolates RRC36 and RRC38 were identified to show antimicrobial activities against non-pathogenic isolates of Staphylococcus aureus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scientific study conducted and provides the insight in occurrence and distribution of the cultivated bacterial diversity from the Raspberry Rising Cave. Moreover, the antimicrobial properties exhibited by some of the bacterial isolates suggested that this cave system could be a resource for potential antibiotics, drugs or novel biologics of clinical relevance.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1827-806X.49.1.2291
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Ghosh, Soumya; Gabrielle Kam; Monique Nijjer; Christian Stenner; and Naowarat Cheeptham.
2020.
Culture dependent analysis of bacterial diversity in Canada’s Raspberry Rising Cave revealed antimicrobial properties.
International Journal of Speleology,
49: 43-53.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/ijs/vol49/iss1/6
Supplementary Table 1. Sample locations in the Raspberry Rising Cave with their distinctive properties as indicated.
Supplementary Table 2.pdf (290 kB)
Supplementary Table 2. 16S rRNA gene sequences of the Raspberry Rising Cave bacterial isolates as retrieved from the GenBank.
Supplementary Table 3.pdf (191 kB)
Supplementary Table 3. Raspberry Rising Cave bacterial isolates with their closest relative, percent identity, percent Query cover, E value and Gene Accession numbers assigned by the GenBank and DNA Data Bank of Japan.
