Title

Screening of endophytic bacteria isolated from leaves of Sambung Nyawa [Gynura procumbens (Lour.) Merr.] for cytokinin-like compounds 

Authors

Subhash J Bhore^*, Ravichantar Nithya, Chye Ying Loh

Affiliation

Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, AIMST University, Bedong-Semeling Road, Bedong, 08100, Kedah, Malaysia

Email

subhashbhore@gmail.com

+60 4 429 8176

+60 4 429 8109; * Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received October 9, 2010; Accepted October 11, 2010; Published November 1, 2010
 

Endophytic bacteria are harmless in most plant species; and known to boost the growth and development of the host plants probably by secreting growth hormones. The isolation, identification and screening of endophytic bacteria for the plant growth regulators like cytokinin are needed to get the leads for their applications in agriculture sector. We describe the isolation and identification of the bacterial endophytes from the leaves of Sambung Nyawa [Gynura procumbens (Lour.) Merr.] and their screening for cytokinin-like compounds. We isolated three endophytic bacteria from the leaves of G. procumbens collected from the forest research institute of Malaysia (FRIM). They were further identified using amplified 16S rRNA gene sequence based method of bacterial identification. The ethyl acetate extracts of the isolates-broth were analyzed using cucumber cotyledon greening bioassay (CCGB) to determine the presence of cytokinin-like compounds. Consequently, the bacterial putative endophytes were identified as Psuedomonas resinovorans, Paenibacillus polymaxa, and Acenitobacter calcoaceticus. Broth-extracts from two (Psuedomonas resinovorans and Paenibacillus polymaxa) of the three putative bacterial endophytes show the positive results in their screening for cytokinin-like compounds using CCGB. Thus, we hypothesize that the bacterial putative endophytes of G. procumbens that produce cytokinin-like compounds might have a role in the growth and development of G. procumbens.  

Keywords

Bacteria, Cytokinin, Endophytes, Gynura procumbens, Microbial diversity, Plant growth regulators, and 16S rRNA gene.

Citation

Bhore et al. Bioinformation, 5 (5) 191-197, 2010

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.