Diversity of hydrolytic enzymes in haloarchaea isolated from Algerian sabkhas

Algeria has numerous natural hypersaline environments (sabkha and chott) located in the north and south of the country. In the course of screening microorganisms form these environments, we isolated and characterized 44 haloarchaeal strains. According to their phenotypic characteristics and comparative 16S rRNA sequence analysis, all the isolates belonged to the family Halobacteriaceae including members related to species of the genera Halorubrum, Haloterrigena, Halogeometricum, Halobacterium, Haloferax, Halomicrobium and Haloarcula. Our finding reveals that Halorubrum is the most prevalent genus retrieved. The production of hydrolase was qualitatively studied on these isolates. Several strains were able to produce amylase, gelatinase and lipase. None was able to produce DNase activity. Combined hydrolytic activity was also detected in many strains.