Author:
Sanjida Akter Shanta
Co-Author:
Joseph Taylor
Kaunain Fatima Syeda
Mentor:
Lalitha Jayant
Abstract:
This study aims to identify and characterize bacterial flora that coexists on the surface of the sea urchin, Lytechinus variegatus. Identifying unknown marine bacteria helps in studying the diversity of marine ecosystems and discovering new chemicals that may be helpful in medicine or biotechnology. Several bacterial strains were isolated from sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus by gently swabbing their external surfaces and plating them onto marine agar plates. Individual
colonies were streaked repeatedly to ensure that all bacteria were obtained from single colonies. All of them were stored in glycerol cultures. 14 were chosen for identification and characterization. Gram staining of these isolated bacteria revealed all were gram-negative rods. Additionally, bacteria were tested for antibiotic resistance and plasmid presence. Current results indicate that all bacteria are amylase-positive; however, only one of them is cellulose-positive. A few of them are resistant to common antibiotics, and some harbored plasmids. Chromosomal DNA of all the 14 bacteria will be isolated, and the conserved 500 bp of the 16S rRNA gene will be amplified by PCR. Samples will be sequenced using the Thermo Fisher MicroSEQ kit and subjected to phylogenetic analysis using the NCBI website and MicroSEQ software. They will also be tested for the presence of bioactive compounds and other enzymes.
