Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2017
Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster V68
Höfundar / Authors: Kristinn Pétur Magnússon (1,2,3), Máney Sveinsdóttir (2), Margrét Auður Sigurbjörnsdóttir (2), Guðný Vala Þorsteinsdóttir (1), Oddur Þ. Vilhelmsson (2,3), Ólafur K. Nielsen (4)
Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: 1 The Icelandic Institute of Natural History, 600 Akureyri, Iceland 2 Department of Natural Resource Sciences, University of Akureyri, 600 Akureyri, Iceland 3 Biomedical Center, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland 4 The Icelandic Institute of Natural History, 210 Garðabær, Iceland
Kynnir / Presenter: Kristinn Pétur Magnússon
A bird’s feathers serve functions for flight, insulation of the body and adornments for communication and mating. However, feathers harbor large amounts of parasites including bacteria. Bird feathers are comprised primarily of keratin: a structural protein common in hair, fur, horns, claws, and scales. Keratin is also a complex and relatively energy-rich organic molecule that may be metabolized for net gain. As such, many bacteria have evolved to digest keratin with keratinase, which hydrolyzes the disulfide bonds present in keratin, breaking the protein down into smaller parts that may eventually be fed through catabolic pathways. Previously we had taken feather samples and serially diluted and plated on both commercial media and on feather meal agar. After the screening of colonies based on morphological characteristics, we verified a total of 48 strains by colony-PCR and16S rDNA-sequenced, yielding 24 distinct OTUs, including a putatively novel Deinococcus sp. Furthermore, thirteen bacterial isolates from feathers bacteria showed keratinase activity in a simple assay to determine keratin degradation in vitro.
The vast majority of bacteria strains cannot be culture-grown. In order to get the full picture, we used 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing for studying phylogeny and taxonomy. The most abundant phylum were: Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Acidobacteria, Tenericutes, Spirochaetae, Verrucomicrobia, Chloroflexi.