Abstract
Lycium barbarum is widely distributed in China and used as a traditional Chinese medicine herb to treat dizziness, abdominal pain, dry cough, headache and fatigue. Several studies have examined the endophytes of L. barbarum from northwest China; however, few have focused on that from eastern China. The objective of this study was to isolate and determine the endophytic fungi of L. barbarum from Shandong province, as well as to obtain and identify active secondary metabolites from the endophytes. In this study, 17 endophytic fungi were isolated from L. barbarum and denoted as GQ-1 to GQ-17, respectively. These fungi were further classified into ten genera based on the morphological and ITS identification. The crude extracts of these fungi were obtained by using liquid fermentation and EtOAc extraction, and their antibacterial, cytotoxic, and antioxidant activities were evaluated. The results showed that GQ-6 and GQ-16 exhibited high inhibitory activity; GQ-6 and GQ-9 showed high cytotoxic activity and GQ-5 exhibited high scavenging capability for DPPH free radicals. Additionally, Cladosporium sp. GQ-6 was used to investigate the secondary metabolites. The crude extracts were purified by using column chromatography, reverse column, and liquid chromatography, and four monomeric compounds were identified, including two known compounds (α-acetylorcinol (1) and cladosporester B (2)) and two new compounds (cladosporacid F (3) and cladosporester D (4)). The anti-fungal and antibacterial activities of these compounds were confirmed, but no cytotoxic activity was observed. In conclusion, endophytic fungi of L. barbarum from eastern China can serve as a potential source of active natural products with antibacterial and antioxidant properties.
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Data availability
The datasets generated for this study can be found in the GenBank under accession numbers OR229691–OR229707.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Youth Science Foundation Program of Shandong First Medical University (202201-034), National College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program (202310439014, 202310439002), Shandong Medical and Health Science and Technology Development Project (202101060623), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21602152) and the Student Research Training Program of Shandong First Medical University (2022104391502, 2022104391556).
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LL, WX and CC performed the experiments and analyzed data. LW, YT, HL and YZ performed the experiments. YL, ZY, FZ and YT designed the experiments and edited the manuscript. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Liu, L., Xu, W., Cui, C. et al. Endophytic fungi of Lycium barbarum: isolation, determination, bioactivity and separation of compounds. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 40, 26 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-023-03830-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-023-03830-x