58 Khaled A. Selim, Mohamed M. S. Nagia and Dina E. El. Ghwas
development of Alzheimer’s disease (Selim et al., 2014). Compounds isolated
from the endophytic fungus Chaetomium globosum isolated from Egyptian
medicinal plant showed promising butyryl cholinesterase inhibitory activities,
beside strong antioxidant activity with EC 50 11.5 μg/ml (Selim et al., 2014 and
2016).
10. CHEMICAL VARIETY OF METABOLITES ISOLATED
FROM ENDOPHYTIC FUNGI
Endophytic fungi are considered as a promising source of active
compounds or an alternative source of metabolites produced by higher plants
(Kusari and Spiteller, 2011). Actually, a lot of bioactive compounds produced
by endophytes fungi contain antimycotic, anticancer agents, antibiotics,
insecticides and antiviral compound (Strobel and Daisy, 2003 and Verma et
al., 2009). These compounds are different in both their complexity and their
chemical class like peptides and their substituted derivatives, glycosides,
phenolics, completely odd and complex lipids and unanticipated structure as
(3- carbamoyl- quinoxalinium) chloride and tetramic acids. The focus of this
part is to present the wide chemical variety of entities produced by endophytes
with an emphasis on the different biological activates of those compounds and
highlights the recent updates of new compounds. In this respect, the structures
of endophytic compounds were identified based on different sophisticated
chemical methods mainly (IR, UV and HRESIMS, 1D and 2D NMR, NOE,
CD, X-ray crystallography and chiral HPLC).
10.1. Alkaloids
Alkaloids are a large group of basic nitrogenous organic compounds.
Commonly, they have a bitter taste. The most common examples are caffeine,
morphine and nicotine. Since long the plants were the sole source of alkaloids
in this section some alkaloids isolated from endophytic fungi will be
represented.
Based on the analysis and correlative interpretation of HRESIMS, NMR
and CD spectral data two novel diketopiprazine alkaloids were obtained from
Fusarium sp. Separated from a Marine Alga, fusaperazine A (1) and
fusaperazine B (2) which is an O-prenylated derivative (Usami et al., 2002).