Hyper-production of taxol from , an endophytic fungus isolated from sp. of the Northern Himalayan region.

Taxol® (generic name Paclitaxel) is a chemotherapeutic drug, effective against head, neck, breast, lung, bladder, ovary, and cervix cancers. Rising demands in chemotherapy and limited supply of natural taxol have ultimately increased the cost of the drug. Semi synthesis using taxol precursors is not able to meet the global supply and has intensified the need to find alternative ways of taxol production. In the present study, 34 different endophytes were isolated from sp. collected from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh (India). Primary screening of taxol-producing fungi was carried out based on the presence of gene, essential for the taxol biosynthetic pathway. A fungal isolate TPF-06 was screened to be a taxol-producing strain based on the PCR amplification results. It was characterized and identified as by (Accession No. KU-837249). Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and phylogenetic analysis confirmed that strain belonged to clade (Accession No. MF-374798) and is endophytic in nature. Presence of taxol was detected and quantified by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and characterized by using Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC), Ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy, Mass spectrometry (MS), Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Microbial fermentation in the S7 medium yielded 1.60 g/L of taxol, which to the best of our knowledge is the highest taxol production from an endophytic fungus. Findings of the present study suggest that the is an excellent alternate source for taxol supply, and it may become a highly potent strain on a commercial scale. The involvement of gene in KU-837249 strain further suggested a way of increasing taxol yield in fungi by medium engineering and recombinant DNA technology in the future.