Identification, characterization and hydrolase producing performance of thermophilic bacteria: geothermal hot springs in the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia Regions of Turkey.

In the last two decades, researchers have increasingly focused on the rich microorganism-based diversity of natural hot spring sources to explore the benefits of thermophiles in industrial and biotechnological fields. Within the scope of this study, a total of 83 thermophilic Bacilli strains were isolated from 7 different geothermal hot springs (at temperatures ranging between 40 and 85 °C) located in the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia Regions of Turkey. The physiological, morphological, biochemical and molecular properties of the isolates were determined. As a result of the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, 5 different species (Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus sp., Bacillus subtilis, Geobacillus kaustophilus, and Weizmannia coagulans,) were identified. B. licheniformis and B. subtilis were the most frequently encountered species among those obtained from the researched hot spring sources. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted to evaluate the phylogenetic relationships of the isolated species. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the groups and the bacteria in terms of the locations or optimum temperatures of the isolates. The bacterial isolates were screened for amylase, cellulase, lipase and protease hydrolytic enzyme activities. The hydrolytic enzyme production potentials among the isolates were identified in 68 (82%) isolates for amylase, 34 (41%) for cellulase, 69 (83%) for lipase and 73 (88%) for protease. All isolates were found to have at least one or more extracellular enzyme activities. Additionally, it was determined that 27 of the existing isolates (32.8%) were able to produce all of the aforementioned hydrolytic enzymes.

Analysis of Large Seeds from Three Different Medicago truncatula Ecotypes Reveals a Potential Role of Hormonal Balance in Final Size Determination of Legume Grains.

Legume seeds are important as protein and oil source for human diet. Understanding how their final seed size is determined is crucial to improve crop yield. In this study, we analyzed seed development of three accessions of the model legume, Medicago truncatula, displaying contrasted seed size. By comparing two large seed accessions to the reference accession A17, we described mechanisms associated with large seed size determination and potential factors modulating the final seed size. We observed that early events during embryogenesis had a major impact on final seed size and a delayed heart stage embryo development resulted to large seeds. We also observed that the difference in seed growth rate was mainly due to a difference in embryo cell number, implicating a role of cell division rate. Large seed accessions could be explained by an extended period of cell division due to a longer embryogenesis phase. According to our observations and recent reports, we observed that auxin (IAA) and abscisic acid (ABA) ratio could be a key determinant of cell division regulation at the end of embryogenesis. Overall, our study highlights that timing of events occurring during early seed development play decisive role for final seed size determination.