A Review of Diterpenes from Marine-Derived Fungi: 2009-2021

Marine-derived fungi are important sources of novel compounds and pharmacologically active metabolites. As an important class of natural products, diterpenes show various biological activities, such as antiviral, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, and cytotoxic activities. Developments of equipment for the deep-sea sample collection allow discoveries of more marine-derived fungi with increasing diversity, and much progress has been made in the identification of diterpenes with novel structures and bioactivities from marine fungi in the past decade. The present review article summarized the chemical structures, producing organisms and biological activities of 237 diterpenes which were isolated from various marine-derived fungi over the period from 2009 to 2021. This review is beneficial for the exploration of marine-derived fungi as promising sources of bioactive diterpenes.

Trichoderma: A Treasure House of Structurally Diverse Secondary Metabolites With Medicinal Importance

Fungi play an irreplaceable role in drug discovery in the course of human history, as they possess unique abilities to synthesize diverse specialized metabolites with significant medicinal potential. Trichoderma are well-studied filamentous fungi generally observed in nature, which are widely marketed as biocontrol agents. The secondary metabolites produced by Trichoderma have gained extensive attention since they possess attractive chemical structures with remarkable biological activities. A large number of metabolites have been isolated from Trichoderma species in recent years. A previous review by Reino et al. summarized 186 compounds isolated from Trichoderma as well as their biological activities up to 2008. To update the relevant list of reviews of secondary metabolites produced from Trichoderma sp., we provide a comprehensive overview in regard to the newly described metabolites of Trichoderma from the beginning of 2009 to the end of 2020, with emphasis on their chemistry and various bioactivities. A total of 203 compounds with considerable bioactivities are included in this review, which is worth expecting for the discovery of new drug leads and agrochemicals in the foreseeable future. Moreover, new strategies for discovering secondary metabolites of Trichoderma in recent years are also discussed herein.

The Terpenoid Biosynthesis Toolkit of Trichoderma

The widely used biotechnologically important fungi belonging to the genus Trichoderma are rich sources of secondary metabolites. Even though the genomes of several Trichoderma spp. have been published, and data are available on the genes involved in biosynthesis of non-ribosomal peptide synthetases and polyketide synthases, no genome-wide data are available for the terpenoid biosynthesis machinery in these organisms. In the present study, we have identified the genes involved in terpene biosynthesis in the genomes of three Trichoderma spp., viz., T. virens, T. atroviride and T. reesei. While the genes involved in the condensation steps are highly conserved across the three species, these fungi differed in the number and organization of terpene cyclases. T. virens genome harbours eleven terpene cyclases, while T. atroviride harbours seven, and T. reeseisix in their genomes; seven, three and two being part of putative secondary metabolism related gene clusters.

Two Chlorinated Benzofuran Derivatives from the Marine Fungus Pseudallescheria boydii

The marine fungus Pseudallescheria boydii was isolated from the inner tissue of the starfish Acanthaster planci. This fungus was cultured in a high salinity glucose-peptone-yeast extract (GPY) medium. Two new chlorinated benzofuran derivatives, 6-chloro-2-(2-hydroxypropan-2-yl)–2,3-dihydro-5-hydroxybenzofuran (1) and 7-chloro-2-(2-hydroxypropan-2-yl)–2,3-dihydro-5-hydroxybenzofuran (2), were obtained from the extract of the culture broth. Their structures were determined by analysis of the NMR and MS data.