Covering: up to December 2017 The diversity of secondary metabolites in the fungal order Xylariales is reviewed with special emphasis on correlations between chemical diversity and biodiversity as inferred from recent taxonomic and phylogenetic studies. The Xylariales are arguably among the predominant fungal endophytes, which are the producer organisms of pharmaceutical lead compounds including the antimycotic sordarins and the antiparasitic nodulisporic acids, as well as the marketed drug, emodepside. Many Xylariales are "macromycetes", which form conspicuous fruiting bodies (stromata), and the metabolite profiles that are predominant in the stromata are often complementary to those encountered in corresponding mycelial cultures of a given species. Secondary metabolite profiles have recently been proven highly informative as additional parameters to support classical morphology and molecular phylogenetic approaches in order to reconstruct evolutionary relationships among these fungi. Even the recent taxonomic rearrangement of the Xylariales has been relying on such approaches, since certain groups of metabolites seem to have significance at the species, genus or family level, respectively, while others are only produced in certain taxa and their production is highly dependent on the culture conditions. The vast metabolic diversity that may be encountered in a single species or strain is illustrated based on examples like Daldinia eschscholtzii, Hypoxylon rickii, and Pestalotiopsis fici. In the future, it appears feasible to increase our knowledge of secondary metabolite diversity by embarking on certain genera that have so far been neglected, as well as by studying the volatile secondary metabolites more intensively. Methods of bioinformatics, phylogenomics and transcriptomics, which have been developed to study other fungi, are readily available for use in such scenarios.

The structures of the ribosomally synthesized peptide antibiotics from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FZB42, plantazolicin A and B, have been elucidated by high resolving ESI-MSMS, 2D (1)H-(13)C-correlated NMR spectroscopy as well as (1)H-(15)N-HMQC/(1)H-(15)N-HMBC NMR experiments. (15)N-labeling prior to the experiments facilitated the structure determination, unveiling a hitherto unusual number of thiazoles and oxazoles formed from a linear 14mer precursor peptide. This finding further extends the number of known secondary metabolites from B. amyloliquefaciens and represents a new type of secondary metabolites from the genus Bacillus.

Three new 22-membered macrolactone antibiotics, atacamycins A-C, were produced by Streptomyces sp. C38, a strain isolated from a hyper-arid soil collected from the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile. The metabolites were discovered in our HPLC-diode array screening and isolated from the mycelium by extraction and chromatographic purification steps. The structures were determined by mass spectrometry and NMR experiments. Atacamycins A, B and C exhibited moderate inhibitory activities against the enzyme phosphodiesterase (PDE-4B2), whereas atacamycin A showed a moderate antiproliferative activity against adeno carcinoma and breast carcinoma cells. INTRODUCTIONThe phylum Actinobacteria and particularly the genus Streptomyces is an excellent and in-exhausted source for the discovery of novel secondary metabolites with diverse biological activities based on unique pharmacophores. 1,2 High-quality isolates are a pre-requisite to prevent the rediscovery of known compounds as well as new sources for strain isolation. 3 Our focus for strain isolation is based on poorly studied habitats within the extremobiosphere. 4 The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is such an extreme habitat and is acknowledged to be the driest place on earth due to the rainshadow in front of the Andes mountains. 5 It is the oldest continuously arid desert, which has experienced extreme hyper-aridity for at least 150 million years of climatic stability. 6,7 Drees and coworkers 8 has shown that the hyper-arid soils of the Atacama Desert are not sterile but harbor a rich source of culturable bacteria, the majority of which were members of the phylum Actinobacteria.In a recently published study, the isolation of novel members of the order Actinomycetales from Atacama Desert soils was reported. 9 In this study, samples were collected at El Tatio (4300 m, geyser field), the Salar de Atacama (2300 m, salt flat hyper-arid) and the Valle de la Luna (2450 m, extreme hyper-arid). In all, 16 selected actinomycete isolates were added to our HPLC-diode array screening program to detect the production of novel secondary metabolites. In all, 3 of them

Cyst nematodes are globally important pathogens in agriculture. Their sedentary lifestyle and long-term association with the roots of host plants render cyst nematodes especially good targets for attack by parasitic fungi. In this context fungi were specifically isolated from nematode eggs of the cereal cyst nematode Heterodera filipjevi. Here, Ijuhya vitellina (Ascomycota, Hypocreales, Bionectriaceae), encountered in wheat fields in Turkey, is newly described on the basis of phylogenetic analyses, morphological characters and life-style related inferences. The species destructively parasitises eggs inside cysts of H. filipjevi. The parasitism was reproduced in in vitro studies. Infected eggs were found to harbour microsclerotia produced by I. vitellina that resemble long-term survival structures also known from other ascomycetes. Microsclerotia were also formed by this species in pure cultures obtained from both, solitarily isolated infected eggs obtained from fields and artificially infected eggs. Hyphae penetrating the eggshell colonised the interior of eggs and became transformed into multicellular, chlamydospore-like structures that developed into microsclerotia. When isolated on artificial media, microsclerotia germinated to produce multiple emerging hyphae. The specific nature of morphological structures produced by I. vitellina inside nematode eggs is interpreted as a unique mode of interaction allowing long-term survival of the fungus inside nematode cysts that are known to survive periods of drought or other harsh environmental conditions. Generic classification of the new species is based on molecular phylogenetic inferences using five different gene regions. I. vitellina is the only species of the genus known to parasitise nematodes and produce microsclerotia. Metabolomic analyses revealed that within the Ijuhya species studied here, only I. vitellina produces chaetoglobosin A and its derivate 19-O-acetylchaetoglobosin A. Nematicidal and nematode-inhibiting activities of these compounds have been demonstrated suggesting that the production of these compounds may represent an adaptation to nematode parasitism.

Six novel bioactive bicyclic polyketides (1-6) were isolated from cultures of an endophytic fungus of the medicinal plant Globularia alypum collected in Batna, Algeria. The producer organism was identified as Preussia similis using morphological and molecular phylogenetic methods. The structures of metabolites 1-6, for which the trivial names preussilides A-F are proposed, were elucidated using a combination of spectral methods, including extensive 2D NMR spectroscopy, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and CD spectroscopy. Preussilides were tested for antimicrobial and antiproliferative effects, and, in particular, compounds 1 and 3 showed selective activities against eukaryotes. Subsequent studies on the influence of 1 and 3 on the morphology of human osteosarcoma cells (U2OS) suggest that these two polyketides might target an enzyme involved in coordination of the cell division cycle. Hence, they might, for instance, affect timing or spindle assembly mechanisms, leading to defects in chromosome segregation and/or spindle geometry.

In our ongoing search for new bioactive fungal metabolites, two new cytochalasans were isolated from stromata of the hypoxylaceous ascomycete Hypoxylon fragiforme. Their structures were elucidated via high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Together with 23 additional cytochalasans isolated from ascomata and mycelial cultures of different Ascomycota, they were tested on their ability to disrupt the actin cytoskeleton of mammal cells in a preliminary structure–activity relationship study. Out of all structural features, the presence of hydroxyl group at the C7 and C18 residues, as well as their stereochemistry, were determined as important factors affecting the potential to disrupt the actin cytoskeleton. Moreover, reversibility of the actin disrupting effects was tested, revealing no direct correlations between potency and reversibility in the tested compound group. Since the diverse bioactivity of cytochalasans is interesting for various applications in eukaryotes, the exact effect on eukaryotic cells will need to be determined, e.g., by follow-up studies involving medicinal chemistry and by inclusion of additional natural cytochalasans. The results are also discussed in relation to previous studies in the literature, including a recent report on the anti-Biofilm activities of essentially the same panel of compounds against the pathogenic bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus.

Dereplicated novel actinomycetes from neglected habitats provide high quality biological material for screening programs designed to detect novel bioactive secondary metabolites. 2 Such organisms include neutrotolerant acidophilic streptomycetes which grow from pH 4.5 to 7.5, with an optimum between pH 5.0 and 5.5. 3 Members of this group were isolated from a hay meadow soil taken from Cockle Park Experimental Farm in Northumberland, UK. The isolates were grown as submerged cultures in complex media, and extracts from the culture filtrates and mycelia included in our HPLC-diode array screening program to detect novel secondary metabolites by means of an in-house HPLC-UV-Vis database, which contains approximately 950 natural products, mainly antibiotics. 4 Strain BK 190 was of interest because of the presence of three prominent peaks in the HPLC profile of a culture filtrate extract. The strain was assigned to the genus Streptomyces by its morphological and chemotaxonomic properties. 5 Strain BK 190 formed an extensively branched substrate mycelium, a grey aerial spore mass and aerial hyphae, which differentiated into spiral chains of smooth-surfaced spores on oatmeal agar, contained LL-diaminopimelic acid, galactose, glucose and xylose as major sugars, N-acetylated muramic acid, predominant amounts of hexa-and octa-hydrogenated menaquinones with nine isoprene units, and produced iso-and anteiso-branched fatty acids with C 15:0 and iso-C 16:0 as major components. The temperature and pH ranges for growth were 10-35 1C and pH 4.0-8.0, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses showed that the organism was most closely related to the type strain of Streptomyces sanglieri; the two organisms shared a 16S rRNA similarity of 99.9%, a value that corresponds to a single nucleotide difference at 1434 locations.The metabolite with retention time of 12.3 min in our standardized reversed-phase gradient elution profile was identified by HPLC-diode array and HPLC-ESI-MS analysis to be elaiomycin (1), an azoxy antibiotic that was first isolated from Streptomyces hepaticus and found to strongly inhibit the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. 6 Two further prominent peaks, elaiomycin B (2) with a retention time of 16.4 min, and elaiomycin C (3) with a retention time of 17.2 min showed characteristic UV-vis spectra that differed from those of all of the reference compounds stored in the database. A significant production of 1-3 was observed in oatmeal medium in the 100 ml shake flask scale, which was reproducible in a scale up to a 20-liter fermentor. Strain BK 190 reached a maximal biomass of 12 volume (%) at a cultivation time of 96 h and this correlated with the highest production of elaiomycins, which reached yields of 24 mg l À1 elaiomycin (1), 15 mg l À1 elaiomycin B (2) and 9.5 mg l À1 elaiomycin C (3) in the culture filtrate, and 15 mg l À1 of 2 and 12 mg l À1 of 3 in the mycelium, respectively. Compounds 1-3 were isolated from the culture filtrate by separation on an Amberlite XAD-16 column (Rohm and Haas Deutschland, Frankfurt...

Two novel pyridino-cyathane diterpenoids, pyristriatins A and B (1 and 2), together with striatin C (3) were isolated from cultures of Cyathus cf. striatus, a basidiomycete that was found during a field trip in northern Thailand. The pyristriatins showed antimicrobial effects against Gram-positive bacteria and fungi. The isolation, structure elucidation, relative configuration, and biological and cytotoxic activity are described. Their structures were assigned by HRMS and NMR spectroscopy. We also describe the first 2D NMR assignment of striatin C. Pyristriatins A and B are the first cyathane natural products featuring a pyridine ring.