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Updated: Jun 8, 2026
Screening and Isolation of C-Glycoside-Cleaving Intestinal Bacteria
Published on: February 28, 2025
[Screening of harmine tolerance/degrading bacteria from camel rumen]
Dengdi An1, Yanlei Zhu, Jing Tang
1College of Life Science, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi 830054, China. anddg@yeah.net
Objective:
Peganum harmala, a famous traditional Chinese drug, contains a variety of alkaloids and toxic for many animals. Camels mainly live in desert or semi-desert areas, with the robust gastrointestine system in digesting various feed including toxic plants without disease symptoms.
Methods:
Camel rumen content was used as the inoculant to inoculate medium M98-5 which contains 100 mg x L(-1) harmin and cultivated for 5 days. Upto 5 subculturings, strains that could degrading or tolerant harmine were isolated. Their conversion activity was determined by thin-layer chromatography. The taxonomic position of the strains were identified based on 16S rRNA sequences analysis.
Results:
15 out of the 29 isolates have harmine degrading activity. Most of the isolates are identified as the members of the Genera Lactobacillus (16 strains, 55%), Shigella (7 strains, 24%) and Bacillus (4 strains, 13.8%). Only one strain belong to genus Enterococcus and one belong to genus Megasphaera.
Conclusion:
The results indicated that the harmine tolerance/degrading communities of camel rumen are limited and only Lactobacillus have harmine-degrading activity.
