Chapter 1 - Fungal metabolites: a source of bioactive natural products

Abstract

Endophytic fungi are novel sources for the production of high-value bioactive compounds which are having huge applications in diverse fields of biotechnology. Euphorbia hirta (L) is one of the weeds which is ignored by people due to lack of awareness but research shows that it can be used for isolating potential endophytic fungi for the production of fungal metabolites at a large scale because of its medicinal properties and rich diversity. Fusarium nectrioides was isolated from this plant and investigated for the production of Lovastatin using an industrial waste called liquid cheese whey due to its lactose content and micronutrients. Growth profile, substrate utilization, and product formation kinetics of this filamentous fungi were studied in detail using unstructured models. From all these models, a suitable model was found with the appropriate fitting of predicted models with an experimental data to analyze the growth behavior of the fungus for the enhanced production of lovastatin. Competition inhibition of HMG-CoA reductase by kit assay revealed that the inhibitory effect of lovastatin on cell proliferation is the consequence of the induction of apoptosis and inhibition of proliferation and lovastatin standards.