Biodiversity and suppression of wood-decaying fungi in marine environment, Alexandria, Egypt by selected natural products: Control the fungal growth/contamination

Abstract

The current study investigated the biodiversity and control of wood-decaying fungi isolated from marine environment, at Alexandria, Egypt. The fungal growth was in vitro control via selected plant natural products (seaweeds and aromatic herbs). Among 45 marine fungal isolates from decaying-wood samples were detected. At 85% similarity level, 5 clusters (A, B, C, D, and E) were obtained. According to numerical classification, one strain from each cluster was identified based on the sequences of ITS-PCR. The species level because their best matched references from BLAST search were higher than 96% of similarities with ITS sequences obtained from GenBank (four Aspergillus and one Penicillium species as the most abundant isolates). Additionally, the enzymatic action of cellulase, amylase, protease, and lipase was detected by fungal isolates. The highest enzymatic degradation coefficient (EDC) was of 1.38 for lipase secreted by P. chrysogenum strain HGM3. Only three strains (A. sydowi strain HGM1, P. chrysogenum strain HGM3 and A. amstelodami strain HGM5) produced cellulase enzyme with EDC value (1.075, 1.27 and 1.08), respectively. Moreover, the methanolic extracts of Ulva lactuca and Corallina officinalis collected from the Egyptian coasts besides aromatic plant; Salvia. officinalis purchased from herbal market were qualitatively analyzed using Gas chromatographic mass spectra. Various organic crude extracts exhibited that there were different types of high and low molecular weight bioactive compounds. Most of them are basically biologically important. Thus the identification of a good number of compounds in various crude extracts of seaweeds and herbal plants might have potent ecological role.