Diversity of endophytic bacteria in medicinally important Nepenthes species

BACKGROUND: Nepenthes species are used in traditional medicines to treat various health ailments. However, we do not know which types of endophytic bacteria (EB) are associated with Nepenthes spp. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to isolate and to identify EB associated with Nepenthes spp. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Surface-sterilized leaf and stem tissues from nine Nepenthes spp. collected from Peninsular Malaysia were used to isolate EB. Isolates were identified using the polymerase chain reaction-amplified 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequence similarity based method. RESULTS: Cultivable, 96 isolates were analyzed; and the 16S rDNA sequences analysis suggest that diverse bacterial species are associated with Nepenthes spp. Majority (55.2%) of the isolates were from Bacillus genus, and Bacillus cereus was the most dominant (14.6%) among isolates. CONCLUSION: Nepenthes spp. do harbor a wide array of cultivable endophytic bacteria.