Procaine treatment altered metabolite profiles of endophytic fungus Talaromyces wortmannii collected from Morus cathayana Hemsl

Abstract

Chemical epigenetic modifiers could optimize the compound biosynthesis of endophytes by activating the silent genes. Treatment of procaine, an epigenetic modifier, on endophytic fungus Talaromyces wortmannii isolated from Morus Cathayana Hemsl., was evaluated with NMR spectroscopy analysis combined with multivariate data analysis and antibacterial assay. In total, 29 compounds were successfully annotated in the T. wortmannii extracts and most of them are primary metabolites. Semi-quantitative 1H NMR analysis revealed that the concentrations of some annotated compounds increased in the treated endophyte, including wortmin, mannitol, and choline. Meanwhile, the contents of glucose and skyrin decreased in the treated T. wortmannii. Multivariate data analysis successfully distinguished the metabolite profile of the treated T. wortmannii from that of the control endophyte. This analysis revealed that procaine treatment on T. wortmannii possibly induced the biosynthesis of mannitol, choline, lactic acid, and phosphocholine and repressed the contents of fatty acids, including palmitic, stearic, linoleic, and oleic acids. The antibacterial assay revealed chloroform extracts of the treated endophyte, and its control possessed potent antibacterial activity against the tested pathogenic bacteria. Meanwhile, the antibacterial activity of water-methanol extract of the treated T. wortmannii increased against Enterococcus faecalis and Salmonella enterica. In this report, the procaine treatment altered the metabolite profiles of the endophytic fungus T. wortmannii. Here we also demonstrated that 1H NMR-based metabolomics was the effective method to study the effect of the epigenetic modifier on endophytic fungi.