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Taxol production by Pestalotiopsis terminaliae , an endophytic fungus of Terminalia arjuna (arjun tree)
Author(s) -
Gangadevi Venkatraman,
Muthumary Johnpaul
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
biotechnology and applied biochemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.468
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1470-8744
pISSN - 0885-4513
DOI - 10.1042/ba20070243
Subject(s) - terminalia arjuna , fungus , plant use of endophytic fungi in defense , terminalia , biology , botany , pestalotiopsis , traditional medicine , medicine
Terminalia arjuna is a medicinal plant (the arjun tree) that possesses anticancer activity. An endophytic fungus, Pestalotiopsis terminaliae , was isolated from the fresh healthy leaves of this tree and was screened for the production of taxol, an anticancer drug, in artificial culture medium. The taxol produced was analysed chromatographically and spectrometrically. The amount of taxol produced by the fungus was found to be 211.1 μg/litre. This was sufficient for the fungus to be considered as a potential source material for improvement, by engineering, the production of taxol. The fungal taxol extracted from an organic extract of the fungal culture had strong cytotoxic activity towards BT220, H116, Int 407, HL 251 and HLK 210 human cancer cells in vitro when tested using an apoptosis assay.