Prodigiosin in an Actinomycete

Abstract

PRODIGIOSIN, the bright red pigment produced by organisms of the genus Serratia, is among the more conspicuous pigments extant in the microbial world. The chemical nature of prodigiosin has been the subject of extensive study and was defined as a tri-pyrrylmethene by Wrede and Rothhaas in 1934¹. Subsequent work has demonstrated that the pigment is actually composed of a number of separable components rather than the single entity supposed by earlier workers¹. Although prodigiosin has been studied predominantly in the genus Serratia, the possible presence of the pigment in an actinomycete has been reported². In the course of our isolating vast quantities of actinomycetes from soils collected throughout the world, a small number of orange-red pigmented Streptomyces were observed. This communication is concerned with the identification of the pigment produced by these actinomycetes as identical to that produced by Serratia marcescens.