52 Khaled A. Selim, Mohamed M. S. Nagia and Dina E. El. Ghwas
6.2. As a Hydrocarbons Producers
The search for other sources of energy is becoming important because the
sources of liquid fuel are decreasing. The microorganisms in unique ecological
niches are the most effective ways to search for unusually metabolically active
secondary metabolites. The endophytic fungi have been recently discovered to
produce fuel related compound. These compounds are compatible with the
presence motive infrastructure and renewable which, depend on drop fuel
technology. Beside, these microorganisms have the abilities of growing and
releasing gaseous products on cellulosic wastes and agricultural instead of
agriculture products that may act as feed and food sources. These endophytic
fungi produce bioactive volatile compounds and a lot of them are fuel related.
Reviews on the endophytic microorganisms that producing these volatile
compounds have been appeared recently (Strobel, 2006, 2011 and 2012).
This encouraged researchers to directly plan their researches for the
discovery of new endophytic fungi that could produce hydrocarbons like
Muscodor albus (Worapong et al., 2001). Till now, all members of genus
Muscodor albus release volatile compound that kill and/or inhibit pathogenic
bacteria and fungi and some are detrimental to insects too (Strobel, 2011 and
2012). Due to the effective nature and the broad range of its volatile organic
compounds (VOCs), this fungal genus has been studies and promoted for use
as biological control (Strobel, 2011 and 2012). M. vitigenus, M. crispans, M.
sutura, and M. roseus all are identified as new species of this fungus, which
were isolated from different parts of the earth such as China, India and
Thailand (Strobel, 2012).
Furthermore, screening the chemistry of the volatile compounds released
by these endophytes, detected the presence of alkenes, benzene derivatives,
alkylesters, alkanes, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, terpenoids and other
compounds that either similar to or are linked to the chemical compound
families of diesel fuel. Therefore VOCs were called mycodiesel (Strobel et al.,
2008). Some samples acquired from stems of Eucryphia cordifolia in
rainforest of Chile. These patterns contain an organism that grow in the
appearance of the VOCs of M. albus and also release VOCs with antimicrobial
activities (Stinson et al., 2003a). This organism was identified morphologically
as Gliocladium roseum, however through taxonomic studies the organism was
strange deficient stage of the ascomycetous fungus-Ascocoryne sarcoides
(Strobel et al., 2010). This fungus is important due to its ability to create a
wide range of the acetate esters of straight chained alkanes containing heptyl
and sec-octyl alcohols (Strobel et al., 2008). After that, the scientist knew that