Isolation and Characterization of Novel Bacteria and Bacteriophages from the Haloalkaline Lake Elmenteita

Abstract

There is need to investigate novel cultivation approaches and develop new equipment to recover many previously uncultured microbes, classify and catalogue them as they provide a valuable resource for research and the development of modern biotechnology. A combination of both culture-dependent and culture-independent methods has been previously used to document the microbial diversity of Lake Elmenteita. The aim of this study was to isolate novel microorganisms from the sediments of the haloalkaline lake Elmenteita using media supplemented with signal molecule cAMP and characterize by polyphasic taxonomy. The novel bacteria's colony characteristics, features of the cell, biochemical, physiological and chemotaxonomic markers were determined. Genotypic characteristics were also studied. Bacteriophages were also isolated from sediments using indigenous bacterial hosts. The resultant bacteriophages were characterized by morphology, growth characteristics, host range, structural proteins and genomes by restriction endonuclease analysis and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The bacteriophages were further sequenced, annotated and analysed using various bioinformatic tools. Three novel bacterial strains designated No.164 T , No.7 T and No.156 T were isolated, characterized and identified as Belliella kenyensis, Streptomyces alkaliphilus and Nocardiopsis mwathae, respectively. The 16S rRNA gene sequences were deposited in GenBank