Purification and Characterization of Prodigiosin Produced from Serratia marcescens and its Inhibitory Effect on Leukemia Cell Line

Abstract

Serratia marcescens naturally produces prodigiosin, a red pigment with numerous therapeutic uses. Out of 145 UTI samples and 35 soil samples were collected, and only 16 isolates were diagnosed as Serratia marcescens according to the VITEK system. The isolates were tested under primary screening to select the prodigiosin-producing isolates. After that, the isolates examined secondary screening to choose the most pigmented one, Isolate S2 had the highest pigment productivity (0.1704g/l) . the optimized media consisting of sucrose as carbon source, peptone as nitrogen source, pH 7, temperature 28 °C, and 72 h incubation time resulted in the highest production of 0.367 g/L of prodigiosin. The pigment was purified by column chromatography, identified, and characterized by FTIR, UV-VIS and GC mass spectrophotometry. The pigment corresponded to prodigiosin with maximum absorption at 535 nm and structural formula C₂₀H₂₅N₃O.The cytotoxic effect test was done using the MTT assay. A high cytotoxic effect was observed on the HL-60 cancer cell line while no inhibitory effect was on the normal cell line.