Isolation and Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of and Strains with Antimicrobial Activity Against ESKAPE Pathogen Relatives.

Discovery, development, and production of new antibiotic drugs in a form safe for human consumption have become increasingly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, especially with an increase in antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The ESKAPE pathogens are a group of six pathogenic bacteria that can be highly virulent and are likely to, or already have, developed antibiotic resistance to many of the currently available antibiotics. New antibiotics or new activities of existing natural products are needed to combat these multi-drug resistant pathogens. Our approach was to search for soil microbes that produce antimicrobial compounds that could potentially inhibit the growth of the ESKAPE pathogens. We report one draft genome of and one draft genome of cultured from soil with antimicrobial activity against , a relative of ESKAPE pathogen . The lengths of the genomes were 5.2 and 4.0 Mbps and GC content was at 64.4% and 56.1% for HL1 and HL2, respectively. HL1 has not been assigned to any previously known species. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that HL1 may be closely related to and . HL2 is likely related to . Functional analysis revealed biosynthetic gene clusters related to betalactone, terpene, isocyanide, and T1PKS in one or both genomes analyzed. Antimicrobial properties were previously reported from the products of these gene clusters that could further aid our search for the active component of the analyzed strains.