Biochemical and molecular characterization of extracellular enzyme producing Staphylococci isolated from different origins

Abstract

Staphylococci are pathogenic bacteria known to cause diseases among diferrent organisms including human. The two species Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis are well defined in human diseases although their exact mechanism of pathogenesis is still not fully understood. These pathogenic bacteria could be isolated from soil, water, air, as well as from the living organisms and they are both pathogenic and saprophytic.Extracellular enzymes of the organisms are used for the industrial purposes. The isolation and characterization of these enzymes are crucial steps in biotechnology. The extracellular enzymes derived from the bacteria serve for many purposes in the industry. In this project 128 Staphylococcus sp. were used. Of these 128 bacteria, 12 were isolated from patients, 40 were isolated from the foodhandler.s hygiene detections, 27 were isolated from pygeons and 49 of them were reference strains. They were searched for the presence of some of the industrially important extracellular enzymes: protease, lipase, cellulase, xylanase, amylase, laccase, urease, DNase and pectinase with biochemical tests. They were also searched for the presence of the lipase, protease and thermonuclease amplifications by PCR. The bacteria apart from the refence strains were also tried to be identified by 16S-ITS-rRNA RFLP analysis. The results would indicate the extracellular enzyme production among these pathogenic bacteria and would also be used as a guide in further studies to correlate between Staphylococcal pathogenity and enzyme production.