Identification of antibiotic-producing Bacillus sensu lato isolated from national parks of Hoang Lien and Phu Quoc in Vietnam

Many lipopeptide antibiotics produced from Bacillus sensu lato ( Bacillus s. l. ) against drug-resistant bacteria have been recently reported. To explore the potential production of the antibiotics from this group of bacteria in Vietnam, we collected 38 soil samples from two national parks of Hoang Lien and Phu Quoc and isolated 411 Bacillus s. l. strains. Of those, 22 strains had antagonistic activity against both susceptible S. aureus and E. coli . The strains were further tested on drug-resistant bacteria collected at Bach Mai hospital and 20 strains demonstrated antagonistic activity against at least 2 of 18 drug-resistant bacteria K. pneumoniae , E. coli , A. baumannii and S. aureus . Analysis of 16S rDNA sequence showed that most of the broad spectrum antibiotic producers were Paenibacillus species whereas narrow spectrum antibiotic producers were Bacillus species. Strains PQH 0103 and PQH 0410 were probably produced novel antibiotic agents as they suspected to be novel taxa in Paenibacillus genus. Moreover, strains PQH 1509 and PQH 1702 produced broad spectrum antibiotics were identified as P. chitinolyticus . To our best knowledge, there is no report on antibiotic production from this species. Further elucidation of chemical structure of antibiotics produced from Bacillus s. l. isolated in soils of Vietnam is needed.