Characterization of Actinomycetes Isolated from Some Monuments In various localities in Egypt

Abstract

A total of 663 isolates were recovered from three different ancient parchment manuscripts:OthmanQur’an manuscript, a Hebrew scroll and a Genizah manuscript. The majority of the isolatesbelonged to genera of actinomycetes which represent about 70%. The isolates were identified phenotypically, 92.6% of the isolates were assigned to be Streptomyces sp., whereas (7.4%) where assigned to genus Micromonosporasp. Quantitative assay of protease production was used as criteria for selection of the most damaging isolates. The isolates with the highest damaging ability wereidentified using 16S rRNA and they were S.omyianesis, S. variabilis,and S.rochei. Gamma irradiation was used for treatment of infected parchment.Doses of (7.1KGy, 10.1KGy and 11.2KGy) were sufficient to eliminate the test isolates without any change in the physical properties of the model parchments. The data was confirmed using FTIR.