Diversity and bioactivities of nostocacean cyanobacteria isolated from paddy soil in Vietnam.

Nostocacean cyanobacteria are one of the important components of paddy fields due to their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and supply phytohormones for crop growth. In this study, 13 Nostoc strains isolated from paddy soils in Vietnam were classified using a polyphasic approach. The results showed a high diversity of the isolated strains that represented seven morphotypes corresponding to five genotypes, with 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity values ranging between 94.97-99.78% compared to the available sequences from GenBank. Bioassay assessment revealed that 11 out of 13 strains possessed antibacterial activities, three of which exhibited cytotoxic activities on MCF7 and HCT116 cells with an IC50 ranging from 47.8μgmL-1 to 232.0μgmL-1. Interestingly, strains with identical 16S rRNA gene sequences displayed different antibacterial and cytotoxic activity profiles.