Polymer film produced by a marine bacterium.

Abstract Biojelly® is a sort of polymer that is formed on a cellulose acetate membrane immersed in seawater. Interestingly, Biojelly® inhibits attachment of marine organisms such as algae and barnacles. We could successfully isolate several marine microorganisms from Biojelly®-attached microorganisms. One of these isolates, strain SHY1-1, produced water-insoluble polymeric materials in natural seawater supplemented with yeast extracts and glucose. This strain was assigned to be Alteromonas sp. by the method of the 165 rRNA gene sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. Biojelly® and the polymer film produced by Alteromonas sp. SHY1-1 were qualitatively characterized by Fourier transformed infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and thin-layer chromatography (TLC). The result indicated that naturally occurring Biojelly® and the polymeric materials obtained in this work both were a sort of mucopolysaccharide consisting of amino sugars. In addition, the attachment assay with larvae indicated that both polymer films had similar anti-fouling activity against barnacle ( Balanus amphitrite ).