Expanding the chemical diversity of an endophytic fungus , an ascomycete associated with mistletoe, through an OSMAC approach.

An endophytic fungus (isolate MSp3-1), isolated from mistletoe (), was subjected to fermentation on solid Czapek medium. Chromatographic workup of the crude EtOAc extract yielded five new natural products (1-5). Subsequent application of the "One Strain, MAny Compounds" (OSMAC) strategy on this strain by the addition of a mixture of salts (MgSO, NaNO and NaCl) to solid Czapek medium induced the accumulation of nine additional new secondary metabolites (6-13, 16), with most of them (8, 10-12) not detectable in cultures lacking the salt mixture. The structures of the new compounds were established on the basis of the 1D/2D NMR and HRESIMS data. The TDDFT-ECD method was applied to determine the absolute configurations of the new compounds 1, 4 and 6 as well as of the previously reported bulgarialactone B (14), for which the absolute configuration was unknown so far. The modified Mosher's method was performed to assign the absolute configurations of 12 and 13. TDDFT-ECD analysis also allowed determining the absolute configuration of (+)-epicocconone, which had an enantiomeric absolute configuration in the tricyclic moiety compared to that of bulgarialactone B (14). All the isolated metabolites were evaluated for their cytotoxic activity. Compound 2 was found to possess strong cytotoxic activity against the murine lymphoma cell line L5178Y with an IC value of 1.8 μM, while the remaining metabolites were shown to be inactive.