Fungal Community for Novel Secondary Metabolites

Abstract

Natural products are important not only in the environment but also as useful compounds in various applications as in medicine or as phytopathogens. An enormous number of such compounds have been derived from fungal communities colonizing various habitats. Traditionally, the isolates of a fungal community have been explored as “biofactories” of novel bioactive substances, and they have not disappointed. Among the extracts and pure substances obtained from culture broths or fungal biomass, some have exerted antifungal and antibacterial activities ranging from moderate to powerful when tested on the pathogenic bacterial and fungal strains resistant to the antibiotics currently in use. Fungal communities that colonize the internal tissues of plants have been proven to produce a large number of structurally diverse novel secondary metabolites. Such as, the compound 3-O-methylfunicone isolated from Talaromyces sp., from mangrove environment, has shown antifungal, antitumor, and lipid-lowering properties. Petriella sp., an endophyte of the sponge Suberites domuncula produced a cyclic tetra peptide compound exhibited cytotoxicity against murine L5178Y lymphoma cells at an ED50 value of < 0.1 μg/ml. In this chapter, we reexamine the accumulated data on fungal communities isolated from plants and microbes that produce novel secondary metabolites with antimicrobial activity against plant and human pathogenic fungal and bacterial strains.