Unveiling the Diversity of Culturable Microbes from the Underexplored Mingyong Glacier Landscape: A Roadmap for Leveraging the Potential of Actinomycetota.

The exploration of extreme environments to uncover microbial diversity has emerged as a promising strategy for the discovery of novel bioactive compounds. In this study, we isolated and characterized soil-dwelling actinomycetes from six samples collected from the Mingyong Glacier landscape. After 4 weeks of incubation, 73 terrestrial actinomycetes were isolated. They were selected based on the color of aerial mycelium, substrate mycelium, spore formation, and pigment production. Maximum actinobacterial population density was obtained from international Streptomyces project-2 agar (48.83%) followed by starch casein agar (24.65%), half strength ISP-2 (20.54%) and glycerin agar (11.26%). 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses identified phylogenetically diverse genera including Streptomyces, Nocardia, Micromonospora, Rhodococcus, Actinomycetia, Jiangella, Nonomuraea, Amycolatopsis and Pilimelia within the order Actinomycetales. Our findings reveal that soil from the Mingyong Glacier landscape contains a diverse range of actinomyces which may hold potential for isolating medicinal and pharmaceutical compounds. We also highlight the importance of isolating novel Actinomycetota lineages for drug discovery and the development of new therapies, stressing the role of genome mining and synthetic biology. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the diversity and biotechnological prospects of actinomycetes from extreme environment paving the way for advancements in microbial-based drug discovery.

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Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12088-025-01449-0.