Abstract
There is an urgent need for new substances to overcome current challenges in the health sciences. Marine fungi are known producers of numerous compounds, but the manipulation of growth conditions for optimal compound production can be laborious and time-consuming. In Portugal, despite its very long coastline, there are only a few studies on marine fungi. From a collection of Portuguese marine fungi, we screened for antimicrobial, antioxidant, enzymatic, and cytotoxic activities. Mycelia aqueous extracts, obtained by high pressure-assisted extraction, and methanolic extracts of culture media showed high antioxidant, antimicrobial, and cytotoxic activities. The mycelium extracts of Cladosporium rubrum showed higher antioxidant potential compared to extracts from other fungi. Mycelia and culture media extracts of Aspergillus affinis and Penicillium lusitanum inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Kocuria rhizophila, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, including multiresistant strains. Penicillium lusitanum and Trichoderma aestuarinum inhibited the growth of clinical strains of Candida albicans, C. glabrata, C. parapsilosis, and C. tropicalis. All extracts from culture media were cytotoxic to Vero cells. Sea salt induced alterations in the mycelium’s chemical composition, leading to different activity profiles.
Highlights
Marine environments represent the last frontier of biodiversity
We investigated whether sea salt can have pronounced effects on bioactivities from marine fungi
All strains were maintained at 25 ◦ C in potato dextrose agar (PDA) containing 3% sea salt (Sigma-Aldrich, Darmstadt, Germany) prior to testing
Summary
Marine environments represent the last frontier of biodiversity. Even though marine habitats account for more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, supporting large numbers of living organisms, they remain biologically unexplored. They represent less than 1% of the known fungal species [1,2], remaining a poorly characterized and poorly understood group In this respect, marine fungi only recently have attracted attention and are yet to find a prominent place in biotechnology [3,4,5]. Marine fungi only recently have attracted attention and are yet to find a prominent place in biotechnology [3,4,5] Under extreme conditions, such as high salinity, ultraviolet light exposition, low temperature, limited access to nutrients and substrates for growth, and even extreme hydrostatic pressure [6], marine fungi have developed unique physiological and chemical capabilities to thrive and survive [6,7]. They have been isolated from a variety of habitats including mangrove plants, macroalgae, seagrass, other marine plants or macrophytes, coral reefs, drift- and intertidal wood, vertebrate and invertebrate marine animals, phytoplankton, sea ice, sea garbage, and coastal and open-ocean water columns [8,9]
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