Identification of carbohydrate degrading bacteria in sub-tropical regions

Sever al bacteria from the islands of Puerto Rico, Vieques and Trinidad were isolated for their carbohy- drate degrading activities. These terrestrial and marine bacterium were collected from pineapple agricultural lands, tropical rain forests, coastlands and mangrove swamps. Organisms were screened for activity using chromogenic substrates (AZCL ® Megazyme International Ltd., Ireland).The media composition for the effective culturing of some of the marine organisms has also been standardized. Gram-negative organisms were identified by sequence analysis of the PCR- amplified partial small subunit rRNA gene. Results indicate that the majority of the marine organisms tested belong to the genera Vibrio and Pseudoalteromonas and in the terrestrial environments Chryseobacterium pre- dominated. These experiments reveal that sub-tropical environments are potentially good sources of microorganisms with novel carbohydrase activities. ® substrates.