Morphological evolution of various fungal species in the presence and absence of aluminum oxide microparticles: Comparative and quantitative insights into microparticle-enhanced cultivation (MPEC).

The application of microparticle-enhanced cultivation (MPEC) is an attractive method to control mycelial morphology, and thus enhance the production of metabolites and enzymes in the submerged cultivations of filamentous fungi. Unfortunately, most literature data deals with the spore-agglomerating species like aspergilli. Therefore, the detailed quantitative study of the morphological evolution of four different fungal species (Aspergillus terreus, Penicillium rubens, Chaetomium globosum, and Mucor racemosus) based on the digital analysis of microscopic images was presented in this paper. In accordance with the current knowledge, these species exhibit different mechanisms of agglomerates formation. The standard submerged shake flask cultivations (as a reference) and MPEC involving 10 µm aluminum oxide microparticles (6 g·L-1 ) were performed. The morphological parameters, including mean projected area, elongation, roughness, and morphology number were determined for the mycelial objects within the first 24 hr of growth. It occurred that heretofore observed and widely discussed effect of microparticles on fungi, namely the decrease in pellet size, was not observed for the species whose pellet formation mechanism is different from spore agglomeration. In the MPEC, C. globosum developed core-shell pellets, and M. racemosus, a nonagglomerative species, formed the relatively larger, compared to standard cultures, pellets with distinct cores.

Biological evaluation of endophytic fungus, Chaetomium globosum JN711454, as potential candidate for improving drug discovery.

The main objective of this research work focused on investigating the biological and chemical aspects of endophytic fungus Chaetomium globosum, for pharmaceutical purposes to improve the drug discovery process. The endophytic C. globosum was isolated from healthy leaves of Egyptian medicinal plant Adiantum capillus-veneris collected from Saint Katherine Protectorate, Sinai, Egypt. The identification of C. globosum was on the basis of classical and molecular taxonomy. Gene encoding for 18S rRNA was partially sequenced, submitted to the GenBank and got the accession number JN711454, to resolve the phylogenetic relations with fungal ancestor using phylogenetic tree. To explore the biosynthetic power of endophytic C. globosum JN711454, the fungus was cultivated over five different media, oatmeal, rice, yeast malt glucose, potato dextrose agar (PDA) and Czapek's dox media, for 3 weeks at 30 °C, followed by extraction with different solvents, ethyl acetate (EA), and methanol. The ethyl acetate extract of C. globosum cultivated on PDA medium was the most potent extract. It showed strong antioxidant activity with EC50 11.5 µg/ml, potent anticancer activity with 55 % toxicity toward HepG-2 cells at 100 µg/ml and 66 % cytotoxicity to FGC4 cells at 250 µg/ml, promising butyrylcholinesterase inhibitory activities (>85 %), and moderate antimicrobial and stopped the attachment of HSV-2 virus to VERO cells. The metabolomic profiling of PDA-EA extract using LC-MS revealed the presence of several metabolites to which the observed bioactivities could be attributed. Here we report for the first time inhibitory activity of endophytic C. globosum JN711454 secondary metabolites to butyrylcholinesterase, one of neuro hydrolase enzymes that play a major role in development of Alzheimer's disease.

[Effect of PEG stress on plantlets of Chrysanthemum morifolium induced by endophytic botrytis sp. (C1) and Chaetomium globosum (C4)].

The effect of the endophytic fungi Botrytis sp. (C1) or Chaetomium globosum (C4) on the drought resistance of Chrysanthemum morifolium was studied. Ch. morifolium plantlets were inoculated with C1, C4 and cultured in the pots for 60 days, then the plantlets were stressed by 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% PEG6000 respectively in order to simulate different drought conditions. Biomass, the activities of SOD, POD, PAL, the contents of MDA and soluble protein of each group were determined. The results showed that endophytic fungi groups grew better than the control (without inoculation endophytic fungi). With the increasing of the concentration of PEG6000, the biomass of Ch. morifolium of each groups decreased, while the biomass of fungi groups was significantly higher than that of control, moreover C4 group higher than C1 group. With the concentration of PEG increasing, the content of MDA of each group increased too, while POD activity and soluble protein content of all treatments increased at first and then decreased. SOD activity and PAL activity of the control were increased with the increase of PEG concentration, but SOD activity of the two fungi groups were stable. After been stressed by different concentrations of PEG, MDA content of two fungi groups were always lower than the control, while SOD activity, POD activity, PAL activity and soluble protein content were higher. In conclusion, endophytic fungi can increase the drought resistance of Ch. morifolium.