Production of antibacterial compounds using Bacillus spp. isolated from thermal springs in Saudi Arabia

Omaish Alqahtani; Paul Stapleton; Simon Gibbons

doi:10.1016/j.jsps.2023.05.015

Production of antibacterial compounds using Bacillus spp. isolated from thermal springs in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Pharm J. 2023 Jul;31(7):1237-1243. doi: 10.1016/j.jsps.2023.05.015. Epub 2023 May 18.

Authors

Omaish Alqahtani^{1

2}, Paul Stapleton², Simon Gibbons³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, Najran University, Najran, Saudi Arabia.
² Research Department of Pharmaceutical and Biological Chemistry, UCL School of Pharmacy, University College London, 29-39 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX, UK.
³ Centre for Natural Products Discovery (CNPD), Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, England, UK.

Abstract

Seventeen water samples were collected from four different thermal springs in Saudi Arabia. Microbiological assays were used to assess the antibacterial activities of bacterial colonies against antibiotic-resistant and susceptible-bacterial strains, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to identify the genus and species of these antibiotic-producing bacteria. Chromatography and spectroscopy were used to separate the active compounds and help figuring out what their structures were. Four compounds were isolated using bacteria: N-acetyltryptamine (1), isovaleric acid (2), ethyl-4-ethoxybenzoate (3) and phenylacetic acid (4). Compounds 1, 2 and 4 were produced from Bacillus pumilus and 3 was from Bacillus licheniformis (AH-E1). The outcomes of the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) showed that all pure compounds produced in this work had antibacterial activities against Gram-positive pathogens (between 128 mg/L and 512 mg/L compared to the control) and compound 2 had activity against E. coli.

Keywords: 16S rRNA gene sequencing; Antimicrobial agents; Bacillus spp.; Bacterial resistance; Thermal springs.