BIOPROSPECÇÃO DE ANTIBIÓTICOS PRODUZIDOS POR FUNGOS DA CAATINGA.

The development of new antibiotics is linked to the challenge of fighting super-resistant microorganisms, as well as owning broad spectrum of action. To achieve this goal, several sources of obtaining are researched in many different environments. Therefore, this study aimed to use filamentous fungi collected at Caatinga, in the Cariri micro-region, for the production of antibiotics, by means of the importance of researches in this sense using fungi of the region, opening expectation of pharmaceutical industry innovation. The fungal samples were collected, and evaluated for their potential to produce antimicrobial compounds against pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) and Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923) bacteria. Among the 72 isolates, 57 (79.17%) had some antimicrobial activity, of which 27 (47.37%) possessed activity against both bacteria, and 30 (52.63%) with activity against only one of them. After antibiotic susceptibility tests, the CDSA30 and CDSA71 isolates were selected for purification of antibacterial extracts by RP-HPLC. In the purification of antimicrobial extracts, were found two substances with antibiotic activity against both bacterial strains used. These fungi were identified as belonging to Aspergillus genus. The study of the effect of temperature on the antibiotics production showed that there is increased yield of metabolites production with antimicrobial activity when the fermentation temperature is 45 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]