A phthalide with in vitro growth inhibitory activity from an oidiodendron strain.

A screening campaign was implemented utilizing capillary electrophoresis as a primary assay to discover binders to the cancer target Akt1 from a crude natural extract library. Fungal extracts with binding activities were characterized for biochemical inhibition of Akt1 to phosphorylate the downstream substrate protein Bad. One of the crude extracts with bioactivity selected for isolation and structure elucidation from fermentation of the fungal culture Oidiodendron sp.

Strain diversity within a microbial collection.

Random subsets of a modest-sized microbial collection have been examined for culture redundancy, initially by morphology, both to the naked eye and microscopically, of cultures grown on a variety of agar-based solid media. Subsequent analysis, by simple TLC, of the extractable metabolites produced by morphologically similar cultures grown in submerged shaken fermentation was carried out. Apparent duplicate cultures were further examined on Biolog SF-P MicroPlates for differentiation.