Biodiversity of endophytic fungi from selected medicinal plants and screening of biomolecules with reference to lovastatin production optimization and characterization

Abstract

Plants are the major sources, harboring with diverse nature of several fungal endophytes associated in the production of high value pharmaceutical products which have immense applications in Biotechnology especially agriculture, healthcare and environment. Due to the development in human population and land utilization for commercial purpose, majority of the medicinal plants were exterminated. In addition to this, most of the raditional plants used in several medicinal ailments have been left as weeds without proper scientific knowledge. Euphorbia hirta (L) is one such plant that is widely used in traditional medicines and diet however currently it left as weed as it falls short of strong scientific evidences. Hence, the present investigation was intended to analyze the ability of endophytic fungi from selected medicinal plants and weeds such as Cymbopogon schoenanthus (L.) Spreng, Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don, Phyllanthus acidus (L.) Skeels and Piper nigrum (L) and Euphorbia hirta (L) respectively for the production of an industrially important pharmaceutical compound called Lovastatin. ovastatin is a commonly used drug for hypercholesterolemia treatment that inhibits the Hydroxy Methyl glutaryl Coenzyme - A reductase (HMGCR) in the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. Due to its wide applications in medicinal fields, demand for this compound increased many folds and required the strong science base, cheap raw materials and effective ungal isolates to meet the requirement for commercial production. So, novel idea of utilizing an industrial waste, such as Liquid Cheese Whey has been emerged for the cost-effective production of Lovastatin at large scale newline