Production of bioactive tryptamine derivatives by co-culture of marine Streptomyces with Bacillus mycoides

Abstract

Tryptamine derivatives such as tryptamine and bacillamides were strong algicidal compounds promising in controlling harmful algae blooms, but their bioactivity and application researches were hindered by extremely low natural production rates. This study found an induced production of algicidal tryptamine derivatives by co-culture of marine Streptomyces with Bacillus mycoides, and optimised the culture method through changing important factors such as medium nutrition content, culture mode and pH value. The final established co-culture method used only 5 g yeast extracts and 5 g glycerol in 1 L 75% sea water, but got a yield of 14.9 mg/L N-acetyltryptamine, 2.8 mg/L N-propanoyltryptamine, 3.0 mg/L bacillamide A, 13.7 mg/L bacillamide B and 9.6 mg/L bacillamide C, which were all undetectable under normal culture conditions.

Keywords::

• co-culture
• tryptamine
• bacillamide
• Streptomyces
• Bacillus mycoides

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the (Zhejiang University Cross Researching Fund) under [grant number JCZZ-2013021].