Exploration of high altitude Actinobacteria and their potent antibiotics from Nepalese mountains

01.10.2016 bis 30.09.2019

Nepal has a great biodiversity in itself. With high altitude regions it has become a great ground for study of Natural Products from bacteria. Actinobacteria living on such hostile conditions are capable of producing novel metabolites. This includes antibiotics, antifungal and antitumor compounds. The search for new antibiotics is imperative and a never ending task as the existing commercial products may not work in future due to evolution of antibiotics resistant varieties of human bacterial pathogens. Therefore, the search of new sources and several new generations of antibiotics are crucial for the human healthcare systems. Recently, strains isolated from the soil of various mountainous region of Nepal have shown a good bioactivity against antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains. Some of them are also found to produce antitumor compounds as well. Since Actinobacteria from Nepal stem from an extreme environment and are completely underexplored, there is a high chance to find next generation antibiotics.