Vasundhara M, Kumar Anil, Reddy M Sudhakara
Department of Biotechnology, Thapar University Patiala, India.
Front Microbiol. 2016 Nov 14;7:1774. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.01774. eCollection 2016.
Endophytic fungi are capable of producing plant associated metabolites and their analogs with therapeutic value. In order to identify the potential endophytic isolates producing bioactive compounds, one need to screen all isolated endophytes, which may run into hundreds. Isolation of endophytic fungi is relatively a simple process; but screening of the isolated fungi for required metabolite production is a cumbersome process. Endophytic fungi producing plant associated metabolites may contain genes involved in the entire biosynthetic pathway(s). Therefore, ascertaining the presence of key enzymes of a particular biosynthetic pathway could serve as a molecular marker for screening of these endophytes to produce that metabolite. In absence of entire biosynthetic pathways in endophytic fungi, plant genes associated with that metabolic pathway could serve as markers. This review focuses on the impact of molecular approaches to screen the endophytic fungi for the production of bioactive compounds. An attempt has been made on screening of anticancer compounds like taxol (paclitaxel), podophyllotoxin, and camptothecin using molecular markers. The advantages of molecular approaches over conventional methods to screen endophytic fungi and also identification of endophytic fungi are discussed.
内生真菌能够产生与植物相关的代谢产物及其具有治疗价值的类似物。为了鉴定产生生物活性化合物的潜在内生分离株，需要筛选所有分离出的内生菌，其数量可能多达数百种。内生真菌的分离相对简单；但筛选分离出的真菌以确定其是否产生所需代谢产物是一个繁琐的过程。产生与植物相关代谢产物的内生真菌可能含有参与整个生物合成途径的基因。因此，确定特定生物合成途径关键酶的存在可以作为筛选这些内生菌以产生该代谢产物的分子标记。在内生真菌缺乏完整生物合成途径的情况下，与该代谢途径相关的植物基因可以作为标记。本综述重点关注分子方法对筛选产生生物活性化合物的内生真菌的影响。已尝试使用分子标记筛选抗癌化合物，如紫杉醇、鬼臼毒素和喜树碱。讨论了分子方法相对于传统方法在筛选内生真菌以及鉴定内生真菌方面的优势。
