Marine Algicolous Endophytic Fungi - A Promising Drug Resource of the Era

Abstract

Endophytic fungi have currently been acknowledged as the most promising source of bioactive compounds for drug discovery, and considerable progress has been made in exploring their diversity, species richness, and bioprospecting. Fungal endophytes from unique environmental settings offer a pool of potentially useful medicinal entities. Owing to the constant stresses imposed on macroalgae by marine environments, it is believed that algae and their associated endophytic symbionts represent a good source of structurally diverse bioactive secondary metabolites. Despite the proven significance of active metabolites of algal endophytes, little have been exploited. This review highlights the latest discoveries in algicolous endophytic research, with particular focus on the bioactive metabolites from algal endophytes. Compounds are classified according to their reported biological activities, like anticancer, antibacterial, antifungal, and antioxidant properties. Present experimental evidence suggests that a majority of the bioactive metabolites were reported from Phaeophyceae followed by Rhodophyceae and Chlorophyceae. An intensive search for newer and more effective bioactive metabolites has generated a treasure trove of publications, and this review partially covers the literature published up to 2016.

Endophytic Fungi of Marine Alga From Konkan Coast, India—A Rich Source of Bioactive Material

“…Interestingly, all the fungal isolates irrespective of their place of isolation and genera showed cytotoxic activity on the cancer cell lines tested, though eight isolates fulfilled the criteria of National Cancer Institute showing IC 50 value much lesser that 30 µg/mL (Suffness and Pezzuto, 1990). The robust and saline environment of the marine endophytes provided them a unique chemical space to synthesize structurally diverse bioactive secondary metabolites (Sarasan et al, 2017). The unexplored wealth of marine Algicolous endophytic fungi from Konkan coast promises for the discovery of potent and novel bioactive compounds.…”

Influence of OSMAC-Based Cultivation in Metabolome and Anticancer Activity of Fungi Associated with the Brown Alga Fucus vesiculosus

“…The algicolous fungi have been shown to produce diverse types of secondary metabolites, presumably contributing to the fitness of its host. Some of these metabolites have demonstrated bioactivities, e.g., antioxidant, antimicrobial, and cytotoxic [5,6,7] that are beneficial to human health. A prominent example is halimide, a diketopiperazine obtained from an Aspergillus sp.…”

Anti-inflammatory effects of peptides from a marine algicolous fungus Acremonium sp. NTU492 in BV-2 microglial cells

“…The IR spectrum indicated the presence of amide carbonyls (1645 and 1689 cm À1 ), an ester carbonyl (1739 cm À1 ), and a hydroxy and an amine (3414 cm À1 ). Analysis of the 1…”