review · Scientific African
Endophytic fungi reside inside plant tissues without causing disease symptoms, offering ecological and physiological advantages to their hosts. These organisms bolster plant resistance against pests, parasites, and pathogens by boosting growth rates and improving overall stress tolerance. The symbiotic relationship between the host plant and fungal endophytes leads to the synthesis of diverse secondary metabolites. These natural compounds frequently exhibit antibiotic and pest-repelling characteristics, while also aiding host resilience to environmental stresses like drought, salinity, heavy metal exposure, and extreme temperature swings. Recent research focuses heavily on the capacity of fungal endophytes to generate novel chemical compounds possessing anticancer, antimicrobial, immunosuppressive, and antioxidant activities. Consequently, the wide range of biochemicals produced by these fungi shows significant promise for future breakthroughs across agricultural, medical, and industrial sectors.
Fungal endophytes produce potent natural chemical compounds that protect plants from harsh environmental conditions and diseases. Understanding their biological activities offers valuable opportunities to discover new therapeutic medicines, such as novel antibiotics and anticancer drugs, as well as eco-friendly agricultural treatments that can protect crops against shifting climate extremes and destructive pests.
The identified bioactivities point toward potential applications in pharmaceutical drug discovery, agrochemical pest management, and industrial biotechnology. Potential end users include crop protection developers, agricultural producers, and pharmaceutical companies seeking natural lead compounds. Because this overview outlines broad bioactive properties and potential revolutions rather than developed products, the findings represent early-stage research that requires targeted isolation, formulation, and clinical or field testing before practical deployment.
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Endophytic fungi are naturally found within plants' tissues and cause no detectable disease symptoms in the plant. However, it is believed to possess supporting ecological and physiological benefits for the plant. The fungi confer to their host plant profound resistance to various pathogenic, parasitic, and pest attach by augmenting the plant's growth rate and improving adaptability and tolerance to pests and pathogens. Furthermore, the relationships between fungal endophytes and their host plant help synthesise varieties of biologically important secondary metabolites. Many of these metabolites have shown antibiotic and pest-repellant properties. In contrast, others have imbued the plant's adaptive properties to withstand environmental stress such as drought, significant variation in temperature, salinity and heavy metal accumulation. In recent years, the interest in fungal endophytes has shifted to their propensity to produce new unique compounds with bioactive properties. These properties include anticancer, antimicrobials, immunosuppressant and antioxidant functions. These fungi could become the future of medicine, agriculture and industrialisation revolutions, based on all of the possible biochemical produced by endophytes.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.sciaf.2023.e01594
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