Jaspal Kaur Oberoi*, Tooba Momin, Rucha Ande, Neha Katkar
One of the ability of bacteria is to form biofilms. Generally, bacteria prefer to live in communities in biofilms because by doing so they can acquire many advantages such as bacteria within biofilms show resistance to antimicrobial agents also they can overcome the host immune defense mechanism. The increasing rate of antibiotic resistance by the biofilm forming microorganisms have hampered the treatment options and highlighted the need for antibiofilm agents. Members of the Actinomycetes family are known to produce active antibiofilm compounds. This study was designed to find a broad spectrum, novel, non-toxic antibiofilm agent from Streptomyces against various biofilm forming bacteria like Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus and Enterobacter. Ethyl acetate extracts of two Streptomyces species Streptomyces viridochromogenes strain NBRC 3113 and Streptomyces levis strain NRRL B-16370 were used to conduct the experiments. Results of in vitro biofilm formation assay have revealed that, extracts obtained from Streptomyces species strongly inhibit the biofilms of all the four bacteria under study on polystyrene surface. The extracts are dose dependent and do not affect the growth of bacterial species. Physical characterization showed that one of the extract is heat resistant and other is heat sensitive. Chemical characterization revealed that the bioactive component(s) of both the extracts are non-proteinaceous in nature. There was significant loss in the hydrophobicity of biofilm bacteria in presence of the extract. All together the results suggest that the extracts can be the good starting material for developing a novel antibiofilm agent since it inhibits the biofilms of different bacterial species belonging to different families and thereby prevent chronic infections caused by such pathogenic strains.