ADAK2020

Here we describe the complete genome assembly of seven Pseudomonas spp. isolates collected from a boreal forest soil on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. We sampled this site as part of a multi-week workshop for undergraduates with the goal of isolating, screening, and characterizing subarctic soil bacteria with antibiotic activity against ESKAPE pathogen relatives. The ESKAPE pathogens (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter spp.) are the leading cause of nosocomial infections worldwide and a major public health threat due to their ability to rapidly develop multi-drug resistance to the safest antibiotics used clinically (Santajit and Indrawattana 2016). Discovering novel antibiotic activity against the ESKAPE pathogens is therefore critical in tackling the global antibiotic resistance crisis. Although Pseudomonas spp. found in soils have been previously established as prolific antibiotic producers (Gross & Loper 2009), the isolates described here originated from subarctic soils that are not well categorized and therefore may be a segway into the discovery of novel antibiotic biosynthesis with activity against ESKAPE pathogens.