Antimicrobial potentiality of actinobacteria isolated from two microbiologically unexplored forest ecosystems of Northeast India

BACKGROUND: Actinobacteria are often known to be great producers of antibiotics. The rapid increase in the global burden of antibiotic-resistance with the concurrent decline in the discovery of new antimicrobial molecules necessitates the search for novel and effective antimicrobial metabolites from unexplored ecological niches. The present study investigated the antimicrobial producing actinobacterial strains isolated from the soils of two microbiologically unexplored forest ecosystems, viz. Nameri National Park (NNP) and Panidehing Wildlife Sanctuary (PWS), located in the Eastern Himalayan Biodiversity hotspot region. RESULTS: A total of 172 putative isolates of actinobacteria were isolated, of which 24 isolates showed strong antimicrobial bioactivity. Evaluation of the ethyl acetate extracts of culture supernatants against test microbial strains revealed that isolates PWS22, PWS41, PWS12, PWS52, PWS11, NNPR15, NNPR38, and NNPR69 were the potent producers of antimicrobial metabolites. The antimicrobial isolates dominantly belonged to Streptomyces, followed by Nocardia and Streptosporangium. Some of these isolates could be putative novel taxa. Analysis of the antimicrobial biosynthetic genes (type II polyketide synthase and nonribosomal peptide synthetase genes) showed that the antimicrobial metabolites were associated with pigment production and belonged to known families of bioactive secondary metabolites. Characterization of the antimicrobial metabolites of Streptomyces sp. PWS52, which showed lowest taxonomic identity among the studied potent antimicrobial metabolite producers, and their interaction with the test strains using GC-MS, UHPLC-MS, and scanning electron microscopy revealed that the potential bioactivity of PWS52 was due to the production of active antifungal and antibacterial metabolites like 2,5-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl) phenol, benzeneacetic acid and nalidixic acid. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the unexplored soil habitats of NNP and PWS forest ecosystems of Northeast India harbor previously undescribed actinobacteria with the capability to produce diverse antimicrobial metabolites that may be explored to overcome the rapidly rising global concern about antibiotic-resistance. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-018-1215-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.