Actinophages as indicators of actinomycete taxa in marine environments.

It is necessary to continue to screen for new metabolites and evaluate the potential of less known and new bacterial taxa so that new and improved compounds for future use against drug-resistant bacteria or for chemical modification may be developed. There has been considerable interest in the detection and identification of marine microorganisms since they have been reported to produce bioactive compounds ranging from antitumour to antibacterial and antiviral agents. In this study, an improved technique that involves the exploitation of marine actinophages as indicators of the marine actinomycete taxa and uses marine bacteriophages as tools to reduce the numbers of common marine bacteria, which impedes the growth of rare actinomycetes on isolation plates, has been applied. This technique reduced the numbers of colony forming units of unwanted bacteria on isolation plates and hence increased the chances of detecting novel marine actinomycete genera for isolation and subsequent screening for antiviral activity.