ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF BACILLUS SP. STRAIN FAS 1 ISOLATED FROM SOIL

During screening for antibiotic producing microorganisms from environmental soil samples, the supernatant of a bacterial isolate was found to have antibacterial and antifungal activity on the standard indicator species. The standard cylinder-plate method was used to determine the inhibitory effect of the crude supernatant of each isolate on 6 bacterial and 3 fungal standard strains by measuring the diameter of inhibition zone. The highest inhibition zone on Aspergillus niger belonged to culture broth of isolate FAS1 by 25 mm, and this isolate was the most efficient microorganism to inhibit standard bacterial and fungal species. Based on morphological and biochemical properties as well as 16S rDNA gene analysis, the selected isolate (isolate FAS1) belonged to Bacillus genus. Investigation on the ability of different culture media for antibiotic production led to select Luria-Bertani media for further studies. Treatment of the culture broth of the isolate FAS1 using typical protease didn’t decrease the antimicrobial activity of the supernatant. After extracting of culture broth of the selected isolate by ethyl acetate as an organic solvent, the inhibitory effect was mainly increased. More investigation was done by bioautography method where the ethyl acetate fraction of the broth culture was separated on TLC by chloroform:methanol, 60:40 as mobile phase and Rf were calculated for inhibition spots.