Recent Developments in Metabolomics Studies of Endophytic Fungi

Abstract

Endophytic fungi are microorganisms that colonize living plants’ tissues without causing any harm. They are known as a natural source of bioactive metabolites with diverse pharmacological functions. Many structurally different chemical metabolites were isolated from endophytic fungi. Recently, the increasing trends in human health problems and diseases have escalated the search for bioactive metabolites from endophytic fungi. The conventional bioassay-guided study is known as laborious due to chemical complexity. Thus, metabolomics studies have attracted extensive research interest owing to their potential in dealing with a vast number of metabolites. Metabolomics coupled with advanced analytical tools provides a comprehensive insight into systems biology. Despite its wide scientific attention, endophytic fungi metabolomics are relatively unexploited. This review highlights the recent developments in metabolomics studies of endophytic fungi in obtaining the global metabolites picture.

Overview of Bioactive Fungal Secondary Metabolites: Cytotoxic and Antimicrobial Compounds

“…Beyond that, with the development of methodologies for analytical tools, several platforms were applied, such as HPLC–MS/MS, UPLC coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS), or UHPLC–MS/MS. The MS detector is able to an unequivocal mass identification providing structural information of the analytes, and all these platforms are widely used for physicochemical characterization of the molecular structure of pure compounds [ 34 , 35 ].…”

“…Along with the ability of physical separation of compounds, the HPLC–MS/MS and UPLC-HRMS are employed to identify molecular structures by analysis of their fragmentation derived from mass spectrometry. Due to their robustness, these analytical techniques are extensively used for qualitative and quantitative analysis [ 31 , 32 , 34 , 35 ].…”

“…In drug discovery, the main analytical tools have advantages and disadvantages regarding sensitivity and costs, and in general, are applied conjointly, in order to conclude a structural characterization of organic compounds [ 3 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 60 , 61 ].…”

Metabolomics Analysis and Antioxidant Potential of Endophytic Diaporthe fraxini ED2 Grown in Different Culture Media

“…They produce metabolites with various biological activities, such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, antiviral, antidiabetic, anticancer, insecticidal, and immunosuppressive. These natural bioactive metabolites are useful for medicinal and pharmaceutical applications [ 4 , 5 ].…”

“…Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS)-based metabolomics is favored due to its high throughput, sensitivity, and selectivity. LC-HRMS can detect samples up to nanomolar (nM) concentrations, making it the preferred option for a large scale biological sample study with comprehensive coverage of metabolites [ 5 , 16 ]. Owing to the generation of multiple metabolomics datasets, a statistical approach such as MVDA is employed to aid the understanding of the data trends through visualisation plots [ 17 ].…”