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. 2020 Aug 19;21(17):5958.
doi: 10.3390/ijms21175958.

Diversity and Antimicrobial Activity of Endophytic Fungi Isolated from Chloranthus japonicus Sieb in Qinling Mountains, China

Chao An  1   2 , Saijian Ma  1   2 , Xinwei Shi  2   3 , Wenjiao Xue  1   2 , Chen Liu  1   2 , Hao Ding  1   2
Affiliations

Diversity and Antimicrobial Activity of Endophytic Fungi Isolated from Chloranthus japonicus Sieb in Qinling Mountains, China

Chao An et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

The plant Chloranthus japonicus Sieb is known for its anticancer properties and mainly distributed in China, Japan, and Korea. In this study, we firstly investigated the diversity and antimicrobial activity of the culturable endophytic fungi from C. japonicus. A total of 332 fungal colonies were successfully isolated from 555 tissue segments of the medicinal plant C. japonicus collected from Qinling Mountains, China. One hundred and thirty representative morphotype strains were identified according to ITS rDNA sequence analyses and were grouped into three phyla (Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Mucoromycota), five classes (Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Agaricomycetes, Mucoromycetes), and at least 30 genera. Colletotrichum (RA, 60.54%) was the most abundant genus, followed by Aspergillus (RA, 11.75%) and Diaporthe (RA, 9.34%). The Species Richness Index (S, 56) and the Shannon-Wiener Index (H', 2.7076) indicated that C. japonicus harbored abundant fungal resources. Thirteen out of 130 endophytic fungal ethyl acetate extracts exhibited inhibitory activities against at least one pathogenic bacterium or fungus. Among of these, F8158, which was identified as Trichoderma cf. harzianum, exhibited good antagonistic capacities (the percent inhibition of mycelial growth ranged from 47.72~88.18) for different pathogens and has a potential application in biological control. In addition, it is noteworthy that the strain F8157 (Thanatephorus cucumeris, an opportunistic pathogen) showed antibacterial and antifungal activity, which is reported firstly in this study, and should be investigated further. Taken together, these results indicated that the endophytic fungi from C. japonicus may be of potential interest in screening bio-control agents and discovering of new bioactive compounds.

Keywords: Chloranthus japonicus; Qinling Mountains; antimicrobial activity; diversity; endophytic fungi.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The relative abundance (RA, %) of endophytic fungi at the level of genus (A). Family (B), order (C), class (D), and phylum (E).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The characteristics of the strain F8158. The morphology of the colony (A) and microscopic morphology (B) on a potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium; phylogenetic identification based on ITS1 and ITS4 using the maximum-likelihood methods (C); the percent inhibition against different pathogens (D) and the good antagonistic activity against three pathogens (E) in the dual culture assays.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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