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Fungal endophytes are the critical organisms in the environment residing in the plant tissues without showing any harmful effects on its host life cycle. The finding of fungal endophytes in natural habitat has been insufficient due to some non-sporulating and non-culturable fungal endophytes by traditional method. Several investigations on fungal endophytes in plants have resulted in an excessive knowledge of the group. This review emphasis on the biology of fungal endophytes, their discovery, isolation, identification by morphological and molecular methods, production, purification and structure elucidation of the bioactive compounds.

Pearl Millet is an important crop coarse grain cereal crop in the semi arid tropics which is extremely susceptible to oomycete plant pathogen Sclerospora graminicola causing downy mildew (DM) disease. The aim of the current study is to breed resistance against downy mildew disease into high yielding cultivars of pearl millet. Hence, in the present work a sequence characterized amplified region (SCAR) marker was developed as a molecular screening tool to identify DM resistance source and presented here. Of the 27 inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) decamer primers used to identify polymorphism amongst pearl millet genotypes ICMR-01007 (P1) and ICMR-01004 (P2) and their populations (F1 and F2), only one primer pair ISSR-22 produced polymorphic bands on ICMR-01004 producing 1.4 kb size. The PCR amplification of 1.4 kb band was found tightly linked to the resistant line of ICMR-01004 and also in F2 segregation population was in the ratio 3:1. This band was cloned, sequenced and candidate SCAR primer (SCAR ISSR 863 ) was designed. Segregant analysis of their F2 progeny revealed that the SCAR ISSR 863 marker was linked to downy mildew resistance linkage group (χ(2) 3:1 = 0.86, P = 0.22) with a genetic distance of 0.72 cM. This SCAR marker was further validated using diverse pearl millet lines of India and Africa. Results indicated that the SCAR ISSR 863 band was amplified in all the seven resistant lines and were absent in five susceptible lines. The confirmation of the ISSR-derived SCAR marker in different genetic backgrounds of pearl millet lines suggests that this marker can be exploited for DM resistance screening in pearl millet breeding programs.

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The SLSO method was found to be inexpensive, non-hazardous and a suitable technique for isolating gDNA from DBS samples for genetic studies.

Helminths infections are also among the most common infections in human, affecting a large proportion of the world's population in developing countries and produce a global burden of disease. Pherithema posthuma a helminthes is commonly known as earth-worms, Leucas aspera herb is distributed throughout India. the anthelminthic property of Leucas aspera was evaluated using Pherithema posthuma as an experimental model. Piperazine citrate was used as the standard reference. earthworm belonging to control group showed paralysis time as 64.33 min and death time as 200 min. Among the various concentrations of aqueous extract tested, concenration at 250 mg/ml showed efficient anthelminthic activity and among all the concentrations ethanol extract tested, concentration at 250 mg/ml gave significant results. This investigation revealed that ethanol extract of Leucas aspera showed significant anthelminthic activity against Pheretima posthuma when compared aqueous extract. Ethanol extract also proved to be efficient than the standard drug. this investigation supported the ethnomedical claims of Leucas aspera as anthelminthic plant.

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Evaluating antidiabetic property of <em>Hopea ponga</em> and <em>Vitex leucoxylon</em> extracts by using <em>in vitro</em> assays.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The exhaustive serial extraction was carried out with a series of solvents: chloroform, ethyl acetate, methanol, ethanol and water with increasing polarity using Soxhlet apparatus. The concentrated and dried extracts were evaluated for antidiabetic activity by employing standard <em>in vitro</em> techniques (α-amylase and glucose uptake assay using yeast model in which the effects of extracts on α-amylase and glucose uptake was tested by considering the percentage of inhibition of α-amylase and increase in glucose uptake in yeast cells).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong><em>In vitro</em> antidiabetic studies show that in case of <em>Hopea ponga</em> methanol extract showed comparable antidiabetic activity with percentage of α-amylase inhibition 51.7925±0.92794 % and with IC50 value 96.53 µg and it was less on comparison with standard i.e. 71.0907±0.67796% with IC50 value 70.33 µg and in case of glucose uptake assay aqueous extract showed higher activity over all remaining extracts with percentage of inhibition 49.8100±0.62476% and with IC50 value 250.95 µg. whereas in case of <em>Vitex leucoxylon</em> aqueous extract exhibited significant activity in both performed assays i. e α-amylase inhibition and glucose uptake assay with percentage 54.6147±0.46397% and 57.1337±0.44201% respectively when compared to other solvent extracts.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Results confirm that aqueous extract of <em>Vitex leucoxylon</em> exhibited highest antidiabetic activity among all extracts. Additional studies are needed for purification, characterization and structural elucidation of bioactive compounds from aqueous extract and also confirm its antidiabetic property by <em>in vivo</em> studies. The present study provides scientific evidence that the leaves of <em>Hopea ponga and Vitex leucoxylon</em> possess anti-diabetic efficacy. Thus, considering its relative antidiabetic potency, these extracts are the useful therapeutic agents for treating and management of diabetes.</p>

Nowadays there is a need to search novel bioactive compounds from natural sources because of the increased number of emerging diseases in the globe with their rapid development and spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens (Ananda et al., 2010; Mane et al., 2017). Mostly novel antioxidant and anticancer bioactive compounds have to search from the natural entity. Somehow due to incomplete knowledge and unknown uses, many medicinal plants are lagging behind in the list of worldwide pharmaceutical research (Suryanarayanan et al., 2002; Aditi et al., 2017). The Indian research institutes such as National Chemical Laboratory, Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology has given high priority to the search for novel bioactive compounds to treat HIV, Tuberculosis, Kidney Stone, Cancer, and other microbial diseases (