Diversity of Arctic & Antarctic Marine Bacteria

Abstract

The Arctic & Antarctic are representative cold habitats that offer good sources of useful enzymes with activity at low temperature. Various marine bacterial strains were isolated from marine environment around the Korean Arctic Research Station Dasan located at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, Norway (79°N, 12°E), and the King Sejong Station in Antarctica (62°S, 58°W). The collected samples were diluted in distilled seawater, and spread on marine agar plates. They cultured at 10℃, and bacterial isolates were preserved in glycerol media (15%, v/v) at &#8211

80℃. Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rDNA sequences indicated that the marine bacteria belonged to alpha-, beta-, and gamma-Proteobacteria, the CFB group, and High GC Gram-positive bacteria. They were Aequorivita, Ahrensia, Algoriphagus, Carnobacterium, Cellulophaga, Cobetia, Colwellia, Exiguobacterium, Flavobacterium, Glaciecola, Hydrogenophaga, Hyphomicrobium, Leifsonia, Loktanella, Marinobacter, Marinomonas, Paracoccus, Pibocella, Plantibacter, Planococcus, Polaribacter, Pseudoaltermonas, Pseudomonas, Psychrobacter, Psychroserpens, Roseobacter, Shewanella, Sulfitobacter, Vibrio and Zobellia species. Among the bacteria, we found several candidates for new species or genus. We also screened chitinase-, lipase-, or protease-producing bacteria. Most of them belonged to genus Pseudoalteromonas. We expect that these Arctic & Antarctic bacteria can be used to develop new industrial enzymes.