Indones. J. Nat. Pigm., Vol. 03, No. 1 (2021), 16–23 Setiyono, et al. (2021). Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license 16 Characterization of Tambjamines Pigment from Marine Bacterium Pseudoalteromonas sp. PM2 Indigenous from Alor Island, Indonesia Edi Setiyono*, Marcelinus Alfasisurya Setya Adhiwibawa, Matheus Randy Prabowo, and Tatas Hardo Panintingjati Brotosudarmo Ma Chung Research Center for Photosynthetic Pigments, Universitas Ma Chung, Malang, 65151,Jawa Timur,Indonesia *Corresponding Authors:edi.setiyono@machung.ac.id Article History: Received 14 February 2021, Revised 26 February 2021, Accepted 26 February 2021, Available Online 28 February 2021 Abstract Pigments from marine bacteria have attracted the attention for scientists because of their extensive applications and currently exploration of new pigment sources from marine bacteria is still ongoing. Recently, we have successfully isolated six new yellow- pigmented marine bacteria (strain PS2, PM2, SB11, SB13, SB21, and SB23) from seawater from different sampling sites on Alor Island, Indonesia. The UV−Vis and FTIR spectra of the crude pigment extracts of the six strains showed the characteristics of tambjamines, a group of yellow pigments commonly found in nudibranchs and bryozoans. Moreover, separation and characterization of crude tambjamines extract resulted in five different types of tambjamine with maximum absorbance at the wavelength of 374−392 nm. Based on the analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain PM2 was closely related to several species in genus Pseudoalteromonas with a similarity of more than 99%. Strain PM2 was designed as Pseudoalteromonas sp. PM2 with accession number LC505058. So far, only two marine bacteria have been known to produce tambjamine and they are from genus Pseudoalteromonas. Our new finding indicated that in the group of marine bacteria, tambjamine might be only synthesized by members from genus Pseudoalteromonas. © 2021 MRCPP Publishing. All rights reserved. http://doi.org/10.33479/ijnp.2021.03.1.16 Keywords: pigment, tambjamines, marine bacteria, Pseudoalteromonas INTRODUCTION More than 70% of the earth’s surface is marine and theoretically marine has greater biodiversity than land [1]. In the last decade, the research on the natural compounds from marine become attractive research rather than research on the land. Marine organisms have unique secondary metabolites due to the high pressure in marine environments like high salinity and temperature, as well as low nutrition. Those conditions drive them to produce secondary metabolites as a self-defense mechanism. The produced pigment is one of the famous secondary metabolites from marine [2]. Besides that, pigments have bioactive properties that can be applied in the pharmacological industries such as anticancer, antibacterial, antioxidant, antimalarial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, food dye, and other functions [3]. The utilization of natural pigments from marine organisms should considering the sustainability of marine resources. Marine microorganisms such as bacteria could become an alternative source of natural pigment from marine and not damaging the marine ecosystems. Another advantage is they are easy to be cultured in a laboratory. Hence, the research to find natural pigments from bacteria will always become an interesting object for the researcher. At least, there are seven kinds of pigment that can be found from marine bacteria. There are prodiginines, carotenes, violacein, phenazine, quinones, tambjamines, and melanins. Other pigments, scytonemin (produced by aquatic Cyanobacteria) and yellow trypthantnrin (from marine bacterium strain AM13, the genus of Flexibacteria) were not belong to seven pigments mentioned above [2]. Prodiginines are the red pigment firstly isolated from Bacillus prodigious. Although, now the name of Serratia marcescens was used to renamed Bacillus prodigious [4]. In our previous study, six types of prodiginine found in marine bacterium Pseudoaltermonas (P.) rubra PS1 and they exhibited antimicrobial activity [5]. Carotenoids, a yellow or orange to red pigment, found in plants, animals, and microorganisms (bacterium and Alor island A B C D 10 0 10 20 30 40 N Tambjamines Pigment from Alor Islamd: The colony of Pseudoalteromonas sp. PM2 isolated from Alor island and cultured in marine agar medium after two days. The FTIR spectra from the methanolic extract of PM2 sample showed absorption signals at 3310, 2951, 2844, 2372, 2320, 1639, 1116, 1014, and 881 cm -1 which indicated the presence of tambjamine pigments.