Antimicrobial activity of endophytic fungus Fusarium sp. isolated from medicinal honeysuckle plant

Abstract

Endophytes of plants have a wide range of strains comprising important sources of various bioactive metabolites. An endophytic fungus was isolated from honeysuckle, an important Chinese medicinal plant. The phylogenetic and physiological characterization indicated that the isolated strain JY2 corresponded to Fusarium sp. The culture filtrate of JY2 displayed antagonism activity against some pathogenic bacteria owing to the existence of antimicrobial compounds. The filtrate revealed the strongest in vitro antimicrobial activity on Pseudomonas aeruginosa by increasing the permeability of cell membranes. The antibacterial extract was fractionated and purified using silica gel chromatography. Five different bioactive compounds were isolated by bioactivity-guided fractionation from the culture extracts of JY2, and preliminarily identified by HPLC-MS spectral data. These results suggest that Fusarium sp. features a potentially remarkable antimicrobial activity and could be valuable to discover the new drugs or agents for antimicrobial purposes.