S130: Biodiversity conservation and drug discovery in Madagascar: Microbiological aspects

Madagascar is a high conservation priority area, designated as a mega-diversity country. Because of its isolated island location, most of the plant and animal species found in Madagascar evolved apart from the rest of the world, resulting in high endemism. The overall goals of the Madagascar International Cooperative Biodiversity Group are to discover medicinal and agrochemical components of Malagasy microbial organisms and marine invertebrates, assist in conserving the biodiversity of Madagascar, promote training and capacity development in Madagascar, and develop a model program for biodiversity use and conservation.  The microbiology program aims to isolate diverse actinomycetes from Malagasy soils and marine invertebrates, characterize bacterial diversity by using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and other molecular approaches, and to assess the potential of strains and samples to yield novel compounds by screening for the ketosynthase domain of polyketide synthases.  Soil samples have been processed from Ankafobe Forest, a high plateau forest in Madagascar’s central highlands, Ibity Massif, an area mostly covered in grassland and shrubland, with smaller areas of mid-elevation humid forest, and Orangéa, a small patch of northern dry deciduous forest at the edge of the main ocean passage into the Bay of Diego-Suarez.   Putative actinomycetes have been isolated from 15 marine sponges collected from the island of Nosy-Be.  Streptomyces sp. dominated soil samples but were a minor component of the culturable actinomycete community associated with sponges, which comprised diverse genera with novel isolates.  Novelty of Malagasy actinomycete communities and their potential as sources of new bioactive compounds is being assessed.