title: Isolation and characterization of agar-degrading endophytic bacteria from plants.
abstract: Agar is a polysaccharide extracted from the cell walls of some macro-algaes. Among the reported agarases, most of them come from marine environment. In order to better understand different sources of agarases, it is important to search new non-marine native ones. In this study, seven agar-degrading bacteria were first isolated from the tissues of plants, belonging to three genera, i.e., Paenibacillus sp., Pseudomonas sp., and Klebsiella sp. Among them, the genus Klebsiella was first reported to have agarolytic ability and the genus Pseudomonas was first isolated from non-marine environment with agarase activity. Besides, seven strains were characterized by investigating the growth and agarase production in the presence of various polysaccharides. The results showed that they could grow on several polysaccharides such as araban, carrageenan, chitin, starch, and xylan. Besides, they could also produce agarase in the presence of different polysaccharides other than agar. Extracellular agarases from seven strains were further analyzed by SDS-PAGE combined with activity staining and estimated to be 75 kDa which has great difference from most reported agarases.
authors.affiliation: Microbiology and Metabolic Engineering Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Wangjiang Road 29#, Chengdu, 610064, Sichuan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Weijia
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Congchong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Tengfei
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: Dairong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Qiao
mesh_terms: D000362:Agar / Q000378:metabolism*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism*; D060026:Endophytes / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism*; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000382:microbiology*; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000378:metabolism; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
chemical_list: D011134:Polysaccharides; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; D000362:Agar; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases; C019624:agarase