Shallow Hydrothermal Vent Bacteria and Their Secondary Metabolites with a Particular Focus on Bacillus

Abstract

Extreme environments are hostile for most organisms, but such habitats represent suitable settings to be inhabited by specialized microorganisms. A marine shallow-water hydrothermal vent field is located offshore in northeast Taiwan, near the shallow shore of the southeast of Kueishantao Island (121°55′ E, 24°50′ N). Research on extremophilic microorganisms makes use of the biotechnological potential associated with such microorganisms and their cellular products. With the notion that extremophiles are capable of surviving in extreme environments, it is assumed that their metabolites are adapted to function optimally under such conditions. As extremophiles, they need specific culture conditions, and only a fraction of species from the original samples are recovered in culture. We used different non-selective and selective media to isolate bacterial species associated with the hydrothermal vent crab Xenograpsus testudinatus and the sediments of its habitat. The highest number of colonies was obtained from Zobell marine agar plates with an overall number of 29 genetically distinct isolates. 16sRNA gene sequencing using the Sanger sequencing method revealed that most of the bacterial species belonged to the phylum Firmicutes and the class Bacilli. The present study indicates that hydrothermal vent bacteria and their secondary metabolites may play an important role for the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the phylum Procaryota.