Hydroxystreptomycin production and resistance in Streptomyces glaucescens

The wild-type strain of Streptomyces glaucescens produces hydroxystreptomycin and shows an inherent natural resistance to streptomycin group aminoglycoside antibiotics. Cell free extracts of the wild-type strain were able to inactivate streptomycin, hydroxystreptomycin and dihydrostreptomycin in the presence of ATP. The phosphotransferase did not inactivate other aminoglycoside antibiotics, including spectinomycin. Mutant strains were isolated, which were highly sensitive to streptomycin group aminoglycosides, had no measurable phosphotransferase activity and were unable to form detectable amounts of hydroxystreptomycin. This suggests either a correlation between phosphotransferase activity, streptomycin resistance and hydroxystreptomycin formation or defects in more than one gene in the strS mutant strains tested.