Author Correction: Diversity and bioactive potential of culturable fungal endophytes of Dysosma versipellis; a rare medicinal plant endemic to China.

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Diversity and bioactive potential of culturable fungal endophytes of Dysosma versipellis; a rare medicinal plant endemic to China.

The plant Dysosma versipellis is known for its antimicrobial and anticancer properties but is a rare and vulnerable perennial herb that is endemic to China. In this study, 224 isolates were isolated from various tissues of D. versipellis, and were classified into 53 different morphotypes according to culture characteristics and were identified by sequence analyses of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rRNA gene. Although nine strains were not assignable at the phylum level, 44 belonged to at least 29 genera of 15 orders of Ascomycota (93%), Basidiomycota (6%), and Zygomycota (1%). Subsequent assays revealed antimicrobial activities of 19% of endophytic extracts against at least one pathogenic bacterium or fungus. Antimicrobial activity was also determined using the agar diffusion method and was most prominent in extracts from four isolates. Moreover, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry analyses (UPLC-QTOF MS) showed the presence of podophyllotoxin in two Fusarium strains, with the highest yield of 277 µg/g in Fusarium sp. (WB5121). Taken together, the present data suggest that various endophytic fungi of D. versipellis could be exploited as sources of novel natural antimicrobial or anticancer agents.

[Curve fitting based on genetic algorithms for quantitative resolution in overlapped fluorescence spectra].

The exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) model-based genetic algorithm was used as a fitness function for fitting fluorescence spectrogram. The method was effective for solving the interference of fluorescent substance in the course of the multi-component quantitative analysis. As an example, the interference of endogenous fluorophores in different urines with the fluorescence of gatifloxacin (GFLX) was examined. A good eradicating efficacy was achieved by using the fitting fluorescence spectrogram. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the good linear relationship between the fluorescence intensity and GFLX concentration was obtained in the range of 0.06-3.5 microg x mL(-1) with a correlation coefficient of 0.9994. The detection limit and recovery were 0.02 microg x mL(-1) and 99.2%-109.4%, respectively, with the relative standard deviation from 1.3% to 2.7%. The proposed fitting fluorescence spectrometric method was rapid, simple and highly sensitive for the determination of GFLX in different human urine without preseparation. The recovery, selectivity, linearity, precision and accuracy of the method are convenient for routine assays and pharmacokinetic studies.

Ultrasound-assisted extraction of syringin from the bark of Ilex rotunda thumb using response surface methodology.

In this work, a rapid extraction method based on ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) of syringin from the bark of Ilex rotunda Thumb using response surface methodology (RSM) is described. The syringin was analyzed and quantified by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with UV detection (HPLC-UV). The extraction solvent, extraction temperature and extraction time, the three main factors for UAE, were optimized with Box-Behnken design (BBD) to obtain the highest extraction efficiency. The optimal conditions were the use of a sonication frequency of 40 kHz, 65% methanol as the solvent, an extraction time of 30 min and an extraction temperature of 40 °C. Using these optimal conditions, the experimental values agreed closely with the predicted values. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a high goodness of model fit and the success of the RSM method for optimizing syringin extraction from the bark of I. rotunda.