Interspecies Interactions Induced Pigment Production from Non-Producing Isolate of Streptomyces MR24 in a Co-culture with Bacillus subtilis

Abstract

In the nature, microorganisms is found in populations of different species in which they interact with each other. It is possible to hypothesise that microorganisms have acquired a diverse of physiological and metabolic responses as a result of inter-species interactions such as production of bioactive compounds. In fact, many of these reponses remain silent in the laboratory and hence many compounds which may be important are not appear. In this work, we utilized  microbil interactions to activate silent pathways in order to induce metabolites production. Thirty different isolates of Streptomyces were examined for their pigment production in a pure and mixed cultures with Bacillus subtilis. In an interestng finding, we recognized a pink pigment produced by the isolate Streptomyces MR24 only in the mixed culture. The maximum absorption peak of the extracted pink pigment was approximately at 450 nm. The FT-IR spectra analysis revealed different stretching and bending functional groups at different wave length. The result of FT-IR analysis indicated the presence of O-H, N-H, C=N, C-N, C-C, C-O, C=C and C-H functional groups suggesting that this pigment may possess a good antimicrobial activity which already confirmed as the pink pigment was noticeably effective against Bacillus subtilis.