Secondary Metabolites and Their Biological Activities from Chaetomium

Abstract

Chaetomium spp. has been searched by many researchers for years and has discovered the secondary metabolites against human, animal, and plant pathogens. Our research findings on Chaetomium spp. have been conducted since 1986. There are many species found to produce active metabolites against plant and human pathogens viz., Ch. brasiliense, Chaetomium cochliodes, Chaetomium cupreum, Chaetomium elatum, Chaetomium globosum, Chaetomium lucknowense, Chaetomium longirostre, and Chaetomium siamense which most of them have been developed to be biofungicide for disease control as agricultural input for organic agricultural production. Therefore, Chaetomium spp. viz. Ch. amygdalisporum, Ch. brasiliense, Ch. coarctatum, Ch. cochliodes, Ch. Cupreum, Ch. elatum, Ch. funicola, Ch. globosum, Ch. gracile, Ch. mollicellum, Ch. murorum, Ch. olivaceum, Ch. quadrangulatum, Ch. retardatum, Ch. seminudum, Ch. siamense, and Ch. trilaterale were reported to produce natural active metabolites against Plasmodium falciparum, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, antibacterial, antifungal, cytotoxicity against cancer cells, anti-Alzheimer, and anti-inflammatory, human tumor cell lines, human breast cancer 134(Bre04), human neuroma (N04) cell lines and human lung (Lu04), cytotoxicity against cholangiocarcinoma cell lines at IC50 3.41–86.95 µM, the human BL-60 leukemia and murine P388 leukemia cell lines. Those metabolites found from several species of Chaetomium are reported for antimicrobial activity against anaerobic bacteria, especially Bacteroides fragillis, Propionibacterium acnes, Escherichia coli W3110, Staphylococcus aureus 209P, Cladosporium resinae, Bacillus subtilis, Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Candida albicans, Salmonella typhimurium, Streptococcus pyogenes, Escherichia coli, Salmonella choleraesuis, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, Streptococcus aureus, and Aspergillus fumigatus. Chaetomium species are being discovered as the potential antagonistic fungi against phytopathogens, viz. Drechslera oryzae (leaf blight of maize), Pyricularia oryzae (rice blast disease), Cochliobolus lunatus (perfect stage) which the imperfect stage is known as Curvularia lunata (leaf spot disease), Pythium ultimum (damping-off disease of sugarbeet), Botrytis cinerea (BC) (gray mold disease of grape), Rhizopus stolonifer (postharvest disease) and Coniella diplodiella (grape white rot disease), Phytophthora infestans (late blight of potato), Phytophthora spp. and Pythium spp. (root rot of plants). Interestingly some Chaetomium spp. reported to release the metabolite that showed excellent insecticidal activity against Plutella xylostella. Biofungicides for plant disease control have developed Chaetomium species and their active metabolites have also investigated to be natural products of nanoparticles used for plant immunity. Those bioproducts are used to promote the non-agrochemical production (NAP) and organic agriculture (OA), which has been contributed for farmers use in many countries, e.g., Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China.