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Himalayan bacterial endophytes enhance microalgal cell numbers and chlorophyll content in synthetic co-culture

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Abstract

Endophytic bacteria associated with medicinal plants from Himalayan mountains possess great biotechnological potential. However, the influence of these Himalayan bacterial endophytes (HBE) on microalgal-promotion and metabolite production is still largely unknown. In this study, the interactions between two endophytic bacterial isolates of an endangered Himalayan medicinal plant and long-chain fatty acids accumulating green alga Micractinium sp. GA001 are characterized in synthetic co-culture systems. The endophytes Staphylococcus pasteuri PPE11 and Yersinia enterocolitica PPE118 significantly enhance microalgal cell numbers with 56% and 49% increase in total chlorophyll content, respectively. Co-culturing microalgae with these endophytes demonstrated distinct responses toward photosynthesis at different temperatures. Endophytes were metabolically active for an extended time (more than 28 days) in co-culturing. The findings were further complemented with genomics studies of endophytes which were subjected to multiple sequencing approaches to assemble and annotate their genomes, resulting in key genes involved in PGP activities, metabolites production and transportation being identified. This study expands the benefits and bioprocessing potential of endophytes of Himalayan medicinal plants.

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Data availability

Genome sequences of S. pasteuri PPE11 and Y. enterocolitica PPE118 are available in the NCBI GenBank Data Libraries under accession numbers CP088927-CP088929 and JAJNKC000000000, respectively.

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Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank the Director, CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat, Assam for his kind encouragement in carrying out this work.

Funding

This work was supported by research funds of Project Code MLP-0048 by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biological Sciences Division, CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology (CSIR-NEIST), Branch Laboratory-Itanagar, Naharlagun, Arunachal Pradesh, 791 110, India

    Shashanka Sonowal, Refad Ahmed & Natarajan Velmurugan

  2. Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, 201 002, India

    Shashanka Sonowal, Johni Debbarma, Channakeshavaiah Chikkaputtaiah & Natarajan Velmurugan

  3. Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Nagendra Prasad Palani

  4. Biological Sciences and Technology Division, CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology (CSIR-NEIST), Jorhat, Assam, 785 006, India

    Johni Debbarma & Channakeshavaiah Chikkaputtaiah

  5. State Horticulture Research and Development Institute (Government of Arunachal Pradesh), Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India

    Egam Basar

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  1. Shashanka Sonowal
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  2. Nagendra Prasad Palani
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  3. Refad Ahmed
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  4. Johni Debbarma
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  6. Egam Basar
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  7. Natarajan Velmurugan
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Contributions

NV conceived the idea and designed and supervised the experiments. SS, NPP, RA, and NV performed the experiments. SS, NPP, RA, JD, CC, EB and N.V. analysed the data and wrote the article. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Natarajan Velmurugan.

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Sonowal, S., Palani, N.P., Ahmed, R. et al. Himalayan bacterial endophytes enhance microalgal cell numbers and chlorophyll content in synthetic co-culture. J Appl Phycol 34, 2383–2400 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-022-02798-9

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