Discovery of a new Streptomyces strain isolated from a deep-sea sponge

The deep sea is known to host novel bacteria with the potential to produce a diverse array of undiscovered natural products. Understanding these bacteria is of broad interest in ecology and could also underpin applied drug discovery, specifically in the area of antimicrobials. In a recent study, researchers isolated a new strain of the bacteria Streptomyces from the tissue of a deep-sea sponge Polymastia corticata in the Atlantic Ocean. Phylogenomics determined that this new strain is part of the Streptomyces aurantiacus clade and contains six unique Gene Cluster Families (GCFs) absent elsewhere in the clade. Culture-based assays were used to demonstrate the antibacterial activity of the new strain against two drug-resistant human pathogens and deem it to have considerable biosynthetic potential and propose the systematic name 'Streptomyces ortus' sp. nov.

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Williams, S. E., Back, C. R., Best, E., Mantell, J., Stach, J. E. M., Williams, T. A., Race, P. R., & Curnow, P. (2023). Discovery and biosynthetic assessment of “Streptomyces ortus” sp. nov. isolated from a deep-sea sponge. Microbial Genomics, 9 (5). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000996.