title: Richness and bioactivity of culturable soil fungi from the Fildes Peninsula, Antarctica.
abstract: Since the discovery of penicillin, fungi have been an important source of bioactive natural products. However, as a specific resource, the bioactive potentiality and specificity of fungal metabolites from the Antarctic region have had little attention. In this paper, we investigated the diversity patterns and biological activities of cultivable fungi isolated from soil samples in Fildes Peninsula, King George Island, Antarctica. Fungal communities showed low abundance and diversity; a total of 150 cultivable fungi were isolated from eight soil samples. After being dereplicated by morphological characteristics and chemical fingerprints, 47 fungal isolates were identified by ITS-rDNA sequencing. We confirmed that these isolates belonged to at least 11 different genera and clustered into nine groups corresponding to taxonomic orders in the phylogenetic analysis. Using two different fermentation conditions, 94 crude extracts acquired from the abovementioned different metabolite characteristic isolates were screened by bioactivity assay and 18 isolates produced biologically active compounds. Compared with HPLC-DAD-UV fingerprint analysis of culture extracts and standard compounds, two bioactive components secalonic acid and chetracins were identified. Our research suggests that the abundance and diversity of Antarctic cultivable fungal communities exhibit unique ecological characteristics and potential producers of novel natural bioactive products.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.
authors.forename: Zhuang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.
authors.forename: Liyuan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Che
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.
authors.forename: Dehai
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.
authors.forename: Qianqun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Drugs, Chinese Ministry of Education, School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China. zhutj@ouc.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Tianjiao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D000864:Antarctic Regions; D021901:DNA, Intergenic / Q000235:genetics; D005658:Fungi / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D064307:Microbiota; D012335:RNA, Ribosomal / Q000235:genetics; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D021901:DNA, Intergenic; D012335:RNA, Ribosomal
keywords: Antarctica; Antimicrobial; Cytotoxic; Fungal diversity; Metabolite characteristic