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Antimicrobial potential of endophytic fungi from Astragalus chinensis

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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to discover antimicrobial endophytic fungi from Astragalus chinensis. Three fungal endophytes with antibacterial activity were isolated and determined as Chaetomium sp. HQ-1, Fusarium sp. HQ-7 and Fusarium sp. HQ-9 based on the neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree. Chaetomium sp. HQ-1 showed the best antibiotic potential and was thus selected for large-scale fermentation. Bioactivity-directed separation of ME fermentation of strain HQ-1 led to the discovery of three compounds, which were identified as differanisole A (1), 2,6-dichloro-4-propylphenol (2) and 4,5-dimethylresorcinol (3), from the HR–ESI–MS and NMR data analysis. All three compounds exhibited moderate antibacterial activity against Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, and methicillin-resistant S. aureus, with MIC values ranging from 16 to 128 μg/mL. Compounds 1 and 3 also displayed promising antifungal activity against Selerotium rolfsii with IC50 values of less than 16 and 32 μg/mL, respectively, which were comparable to that of actidione (8 μg/mL). The findings of the present study suggest that the endophytic fungi from A. chinensis have the potential to be used as bactericides and fungicides.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21602152), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2016BB01), Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology Open Fund (SDKL2017015).

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Author notes

  1. Peiji Liu, Dekui Zhang and Ruirui Shi contributed equally to this study.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, College of Life Science, Key Laboratory for Agriculture Microbiology, Shandong Agricultural University, Taian, 271018, China

    Peiji Liu, Dekui Zhang, Ruirui Shi, Zhengyou Yang & Fengchun Zhao

  2. College of Life Science, Shandong First Medical University and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Taian, 271016, China

    Yuan Tian

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  1. Peiji Liu
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  2. Dekui Zhang
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Contributions

PL, DZ and RS performed the experiments and analyzed data. ZY and FZ edited the manuscript. YT designed the experiments. All authors revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhengyou Yang, Fengchun Zhao or Yuan Tian.

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Liu, P., Zhang, D., Shi, R. et al. Antimicrobial potential of endophytic fungi from Astragalus chinensis. 3 Biotech 9, 405 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-019-1948-5

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