Marine sediment-derived Streptomyces bacteria from British Columbia, Canada are a promising microbiota resource for the discovery of antimicrobial natural products.

Representatives of the genus Streptomyces from terrestrial sources have been the focus of intensive research for the last four decades because of their prolific production of chemically diverse and biologically important compounds. However, metabolite research from this ecological niche had declined significantly in the past years because of the rediscovery of the same bioactive compounds and redundancy of the sample strains. More recently, a new picture has begun to emerge in which marine-derived Streptomyces bacteria have become the latest hot spot as new source for unique and biologically active compounds. Here, we investigated the marine sediments collected in the temperate cold waters from British Columbia, Canada as a valuable source for new groups of marine-derived Streptomyces with antimicrobial activities. We performed culture dependent isolation from 49 marine sediments samples and obtained 186 Streptomyces isolates, 47 of which exhibited antimicrobial activities. Phylogenetic analyses of the active isolates resulted in the identification of four different clusters of bioactive Streptomyces including a cluster with isolates that appear to represent novel species. Moreover, we explored whether these marine-derived Streptomyces produce new secondary metabolites with antimicrobial properties. Chemical analyses revealed structurally diverse secondary metabolites, including four new antibacterial novobiocin analogues. We conducted structure-activity relationships (SAR) studies of these novobiocin analogues against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In this study, we revealed the importance of carbamoyl and OMe moieties at positions 3" and 4" of novobiose as well as the hydrogen substituent at position 5 of hydroxybenzoate ring for the anti-MRSA activity. Changes in the substituents at these positions dramatically impede or completely eliminate the inhibitory activity of novobiocins against MRSA.