Abstract
Biocontrol agents have not been previously associated with yak dung. We describe here the isolation of strain QM3 from Qinghai yak dung in China. In vitro antagonistic assay showed that this strain could suppress the growth of various plant pathogens effectively, especially the pathogen Alternaria solani. Based on phenotypic, physiological, biochemical and phylogenetic (16S rDNA) studies, strain QM3 could be classified as a strain of Bacillus subtilis. Both OD660 and inhibition effect of eight different kinds of culture media presented strongly significant difference with 0.006 (P < 0.01) and 0.003 (P < 0.01), respectively. Culture media YPF-Ca were selected from eight different kinds of culture media according to OD660 and inhibitory effect. Different thermal treatments on the crude supernatant showed the antibiotic activity presented no significant (P = 0.54, P > 0.05) with ANOVA at the 5% level when temperature was no higher than 100°C. These results were similarly in agreement with the reported thermo-resistance of iturin antibiotics produced by Bacillus. This is the first report on the isolation of Bacillus subtilis from the yak dung.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. Y.Q. Zhang, Dean of Biotechnology Center, School of Pharmacy, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China, for his valuable permission to assay identification of strain, Dr. X.C. Xue, Biotechnology Center, School of Pharmacy, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, China, for his constructive advice on molecular assays and Prof. H.Q. Yu, School of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, for his kindly and critical suggestions on manuscript preparation. This work was supported by Project of the Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists of Shanxi Province, China (2008021040) and Project of the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Normal University (YZ07013), and partially supported by Program of Ministry of Education of China for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-05-0831).
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Hu, QP., Xu, JG., Song, P. et al. Isolation and identification of a potential biocontrol agent Bacillus subtilis QM3 from Qinghai yak dung in China. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 24, 2451–2458 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-008-9767-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-008-9767-6