Applied Microbiology

The focus of the HZI has traditionally been on myxobacteria for a long time but as actinomycetes are still today a very important and successful group for the detection and isolation of novel biological active compounds especially antibiotics,we started to incorporate a number of actinomycetes strains and projects the work of the microbial strain collection group MISG which was founded in 2013. The collection includes about 2000 reference strains of the class Actinobacteria and more than1000 new isolates of uncommon genera which have been isolated in-house or are part of external cooperation. To enhance the number of novel antibiotics we try to work with uncommon new isolates of Actinobacteria. Therefore we us neglected old isolation methods like the baiting with ceratin and also develop new methods. Besides the screening of novel actinomycetes,the potential of “old” strains is still not completely evaluated. We therefore try to induce “silent” biosynthetic gene clusters by use of different chemical and biological inducers and also look on old antibiotics which have not been developed during the “golden time” of antibiotic research. The compendium of Actinobacteria is also a taxonomic outcome of the activities of the strain collection of the HZI. The activities of the microbial strain collection of Actinobacteria within the HZI structure are shown and examples of the different aims will be given in the talk.