Volatile organic compounds of plant-associated bacteria to reduce microbial contamination on clean room textile

Since the appearance of multi-drug resistant pathogens, it is a significant issue to find new innovative antibiotics that can solve this problem. Source for new antimicrobials are naturally occurring antagonists like plant endophytes. Bacterial plant endophytes have to protect their niche from other bacteria by producing antibiotics. Natural antagonistic endophytes from pumpkin and mistletoe were tested against the most common pathogens in clean rooms in order to identify antagonists that produce new antibiotics. The focus was on VOCs (volatile organic compounds); gaseous antibiotics emitted by bacteria, which could demonstrate a potent weapon against pathogens. Clean room textile is intended to hinder particles and microbes to contaminate the clean room environment. There is a great demand for new routes of decontamination of clean room equipment and garments. We could demonstrate for the first time that selected antagonist showed a high activity against clean room derived pathogens and that VOC-producing antagonists were found to inhibit the growth of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia on clean room textiles.