Abstract:
Embu County has a range of climates ranging from wet and cool in the northern portions that traverse
up Mount Kenya to relatively warm and dry in the central and southern parts of the County. Due to this
gradient in climate University of Embu farm located in Embu County is densely forested with diverse
plant on which termites degrade these dead plant litter. This facilitates carbon and nitrogen
mineralization, nutrient availability and stimulation of microbial activity. An opportunity to obtain novel
bioactive compounds has been linked to the discovery of bacteria from diverse and unexplored
resources such as termites’ nests from different geographical areas. Herein we assessed antimicrobial
and exoenzyme producing bacteria from termite’s subterranean nest and surrounding mound at
University of Embu farm. This was achieved through collection of termite’ s subterranean nest and
surrounding mound samples, isolation of bacterial colonies on various media supplemented with
antifungal-cyclohexamide followed by morphological characterization of the isolates, and screening for
exoenzyme and antimicrobial activities. A total of 25 isolates were obtained, 12 isolates and 13 isolates
from subterranean nest and mound soil respectively. The isolates obtained produced various enzymes
such as amylases, lipases, proteases, chitinase and cellulases. Cellulolytic bacteria associated with
termites’ nest include Bacillus, Cellulomonas, and Micrococcus among others. Most of the isolates
showed antagonistic activity against the test organisms such as E.coli, Pseudomonas, Salmonella,
Shigella, B.subtilis, C.albicans and S.aureus and likely were presented by genera Nocardia and
Actinobacteria which have been shown to produce bioactive. These results confirmed that termite’ s
nest materials harbor bacteria that can produce bioactive compounds of significant in medical and
industrial sectors.
