Progress in endophytic fungi secondary metabolites: biosynthetic gene cluster reactivation and advances in metabolomics
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
Background Fungal endophytes exhibit symbiotic relationships with their host plants but have recently emerged
as sources for synthesizing important varieties of secondary metabolites (SMs). Many of these metabolites have
shown significant importance as antibacterial, antifungal, antitumor, and anticancer drugs, leading to their explora‑
tion in medicine and pharmaceuticals.
Main body of the abstract The endophytes’ biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are responsible for encoding
enzymes that produce these SMs. The fungal endophytes’ ability has been challenged due to their inability to trigger
cryptic BGCs and their loss of ability to produce secondary metabolites over an extended period in an artificial culture
medium. This review investigates the array of SMs produced by endophytic fungi. It identifies methods for awakening
and exploiting silent BGCs to produce novel natural metabolites and explores recent advancements in metabolomics
platforms used to profile SMs. Silent BGCs can be activated using various methods, including co-cultivation, one
strain of many compounds, epigenetic modification, heterologous expression, and cluster-specific transcription factor
methods.
Short conclusion These methods reviewed effectively enhance the production of silent BGCs, leading to a signifi‑
cant increase in secondary metabolite production. Meanwhile, metabolomics profiling using liquid or gas chromatog‑
raphy coupled with mass spectrometry could provide several chances to discover bioactive compounds’ complexity
and chemical diversity. This review has, thus, given insight into the significance of methods used to reactivate BGCs
from endophytes and the importance of varying techniques of their metabolomic profiling.
Description
Keywords
Biosynthetic gene cluster, Metabolic profiling, Endophytic fungi, Epigenetic modification, Co-culture
Citation
Zakariyah et al 2024