Abstract
BackgroundEndophytic fungi represent underexplored resource of novel lead compounds and have a capacity to produce diverse class of plant secondary metabolites. Here we investigated endophytic fungi diversity and screening of paclitaxel-producing fungi from Taxus x media.ResultsEighty-one endophytic fungi isolated from T. media were grouped into 8 genera based on the morphological and molecular identification. Guignardia and Colletotrichum were the dominant genera, whereas the remaining genera were infrequent groups. The genera Glomerella and Gibberella were first reported in Taxus. Three representative species of the distinct genera gave positive hits by molecular marker screening and were capable of producing taxol which were validated by HPLC-MS. Among these 3 taxol-producing fungi, the highest yield of taxol was 720 ng/l by Guignardia mangiferae HAA11 compared with those of Fusarium proliferatum HBA29 (240 ng/l) and Colletotrichum gloeosporioides TA67 (120 ng/l). This is the first report of taxol producer from Guignardia. Moreover, the lower similarities of ts and bapt between microbial and plant origin suggested that fungal taxol biosynthetic cluster might be repeatedly invented during evolution, nor horizontal gene transfer from Taxus species.ConclusionsTaxol-producing endophytic fungi could be a fascinating reservoir to generate taxol-related drug lead and to elucidate the remained 5 unknown genes or the potential regulation mechanism in the taxol biosynthesis pathway.
Highlights
Endophytic fungi represent underexplored resource of novel lead compounds and have a capacity to produce diverse class of plant secondary metabolites
Endophytic fungal diversity of T. media To assess the presence of fungal endophytes in T. media, 81 fungal isolates were recovered and assigned to 29 morphotypes using dereplication based on the morphological characteristics and unique phenotypic characters (Figure 2)
HAA4, HAA5, HAA7, HAA8, HAA11, HAA12, HAA22, HAA24, HBA6, HBA12, HBA18, HBA26, HBA29, HBA30, HBA31, TA47, TA67, TA235, TA237, TA240, TA242, TA244, TA246, TA247, TA250, TA252, TA255, and TA278) were subjected to molecular identification based on internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA sequence analysis (Figure 3)
Summary
Endophytic fungi represent underexplored resource of novel lead compounds and have a capacity to produce diverse class of plant secondary metabolites. The prolific endophytes have a capacity to produce diverse class of plant associated secondary metabolites with a wide variety of biological activities such as antimicrobial agent hypericin [2], acetylcholinesterase inhibitor huperzine A [3], and antitumor agents taxol [4]. Among plant-derived natural products, taxol (a blockbuster anticancer drug) is widely used for clinical application against different types of cancer [5]. It was originally obtained from extraction of the bark of Taxus species. With the increasing demand for taxol and the shortage of plant resource, there is an urgent need to find other alternative production methods
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