Abstract
The plant Chloranthus japonicus Sieb is known for its anticancer properties and mainly distributed in China, Japan, and Korea. In this study, we firstly investigated the diversity and antimicrobial activity of the culturable endophytic fungi from C. japonicus. A total of 332 fungal colonies were successfully isolated from 555 tissue segments of the medicinal plant C. japonicus collected from Qinling Mountains, China. One hundred and thirty representative morphotype strains were identified according to ITS rDNA sequence analyses and were grouped into three phyla (Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Mucoromycota), five classes (Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Agaricomycetes, Mucoromycetes), and at least 30 genera. Colletotrichum (RA, 60.54%) was the most abundant genus, followed by Aspergillus (RA, 11.75%) and Diaporthe (RA, 9.34%). The Species Richness Index (S, 56) and the Shannon-Wiener Index (H′, 2.7076) indicated that C. japonicus harbored abundant fungal resources. Thirteen out of 130 endophytic fungal ethyl acetate extracts exhibited inhibitory activities against at least one pathogenic bacterium or fungus. Among of these, F8158, which was identified as Trichoderma cf. harzianum, exhibited good antagonistic capacities (the percent inhibition of mycelial growth ranged from 47.72~88.18) for different pathogens and has a potential application in biological control. In addition, it is noteworthy that the strain F8157 (Thanatephorus cucumeris, an opportunistic pathogen) showed antibacterial and antifungal activity, which is reported firstly in this study, and should be investigated further. Taken together, these results indicated that the endophytic fungi from C. japonicus may be of potential interest in screening bio-control agents and discovering of new bioactive compounds.
Highlights
The Qinling Mountains (32◦30 −34◦45 N, 104◦30 −112◦45 E), which are mainly located in the south of Shaanxi province in central China, are the most important natural climatic boundary between the subtropical and warm temperate zones of China, and support an astonishingly high biodiversity [1,2,3,4]
It is noteworthy that the strain F8157 (Thanatephorus cucumeris, an opportunistic pathogen), showed antibacterial and antifungal activity, which is reported firstly in this study, and has the potential research value
We investigated the diversity of the culturable endophytic fungi from C. japonicus and obtained abundant endophytic fungal isolates, which was conducive for screening the active strains and laying a foundation for their application
Summary
The Qinling Mountains (32◦30 −34◦45 N, 104◦30 −112◦45 E), which are mainly located in the south of Shaanxi province in central China, are the most important natural climatic boundary between the subtropical and warm temperate zones of China, and support an astonishingly high biodiversity [1,2,3,4]. The Qinling Mountains are extremely rich in medicinal plants, including Sinopodophyllum hexandrum (Royle) Ying, Rohdea chinensis (Baker) N.Tanaka, Bergenia scopulosa TP Wang, Aconitum taipeicum Hand-Mazz, etc. It was reported that the sesquiterpenoids were its mainly active compounds in this plant [5,6,7]. The endophytic fungi produce hormones that promote plant growth and help the host resist abiotic stress and produce bioactive secondary metabolites, including those originated from the host plants [9,10]. All the endophytic fungi taxa isolated from the Glycyrrhiza glabra have been reported to produce the plant growth promoting hormone indole acetic acid (IAA) [11]. Tan et al isolated two endophytic fungi producing the podophyllotoxin, a main active compound from the host plant Dysosma versipellis [14]
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