Antimicrobial and Cytotoxic Activity of Endophytic Fungi from .

In this study, five endophytic fungi belonging to the and genera were isolated from . The antimicrobial activity of all fungal fermented extracts against and was tested using the cup-plate method. Among them, XZC-1 showed the best activity and was subsequently selected for large-scale fermentation and bioactivity-directed separation of the secondary metabolites. Four compounds, including 2-methoxy-6-methyl-1,4-benzoquinone (1), 3,5-dihydroxytoluene (2), oleic acid (3), and penicillic acid (4) were discovered. Here, compounds 1 and 4 displayed anti-fungal activity against , , , , , , and with diverse MIC values (128-512 μg/ml), which were close to that of the positive control antifungal, actidione (64-128 μg/ml). Additionally, compounds 1 and 4 also exhibited moderate antibacterial activity against , , , and , with low MIC values (8-64 μg/ml). Moreover, compounds 1 and 4 displayed selective cytotoxicity against cancer cell lines as compared with the normal fibroblast cells. Therefore, this study proposes that the endophytic fungi from can potentially produce bioactive molecules to be used as lead compounds in drugs or agricultural antibiotics.