Fungi are eukaryotic organisms that inhabit living plants and animals or dead tissues. They are important sources of food, alcohol, enzymes, antibiotics, organic acids, and plant growth-promoting compounds. Endophytic fungi residing inside the aerial tissues of plants do not produce any apparent harm to the host plant (Khan et al., 2023). Instead, they promote plant growth in a variety of ways, including through the release of plant growth hormones, such as cytokines, indole acetic acid, or gibberellins, and by providing biologically fixed nitrogen (Bilal et al., 2018). These fungi have been studied for their role in improving plant protection, in addition to being important sources of new molecules for the development of new drugs.
The research on “Endophytic fungi producers of biomolecules of interest to human health” is important to our team to help foster knowledge of these fungi. It includes three original research articles written by scientists from Brazil and Germany. The team thanks all of the researchers involved in this work for their support and the results.
Two papers focused on endophytic fungi isolated from Bauhinia variegata leaves. In one of these, seven fungi that have antioxidant activities were identified. One of the extracts presented pan-agonist activity in peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs), while another showed activity in α, β/δ, and γ (Mesquita et al.). The other paper studied the antioxidant activity of the mycelial methanolic extracts of two endophytic fungi and their action as PPAR agonists. Moreover, their effect on the activity of antioxidant defense system enzymes was evaluated (Pires et al.).
Lastly, the third article, whose authors are from Germany, presented genome mining as a biotechnological tool for the discovery of novel biosynthetic genes in lichens (Singh et al.).
Therefore, the articles published as part of the Research Topic “Endophytic fungi producing biomolecules of interest to human health” put forward interesting and current information on the proposed topic.
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Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
1
BilalL.AsafS.HamayunM.GulH.IqbalA.UllahI.et al. (2018). Plant growth promoting endophytic fungi Asprgillus fumigatus TS1 and Fusarium proliferatum BRL1 produce gibberellins and regulates plant endogenous hormones. Symbiosis76, 117–127. doi: 10.1007/s13199-018-0545-4
2
KhanN. A.AsafS.AhmadW.JanR.BilalS.KhanI.et al. (2023). Diversity, lifestyle, genomics, and their functional role of cochliobolus, bipolaris, and curvularia species in environmental remediation and plant growth promotion under biotic and abiotic stressors. J. Fungi9, 254. doi: 10.3390/jof9020254
Summary
Keywords
endophytic fungi, biomolecules, human health, bioprocess, eukaryotic organism
Citation
Magalhães PO, de Souza JVB and Pinho DB (2024) Editorial: Endophytic fungi producers of biomolecules of interest to human health. Front. Fungal Biol. 5:1239470. doi: 10.3389/ffunb.2024.1239470
Received
13 June 2023
Accepted
03 January 2024
Published
30 January 2024
Volume
5 - 2024
Edited and reviewed by
Prafull Salvi, National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, India
Updates
Copyright
© 2024 Magalhães, de Souza and Pinho.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Pérola O. Magalhães, perolamagalhaes@unb.br
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.