Microfungal Sources of High-Value Compounds for Pharmaceutical and Industrial Applications

Microfungi are a prolific and underexplored source of high-value bioactive compounds with great potential for pharmaceutical and industrial applications. However, despite the discovery of promising pigments, biosurfactants, and antimicrobial molecules, there are still considerable gaps in translating these metabolites into scalable and sustainable processes. Global challenges such as antimicrobial resistance, the need for safer and eco-friendly pigments, and the demand for novel drug delivery systems emphasize the urgency of expanding research in this field.

This Research Topic aims to address these gaps by bringing together recent advances in microfungal biotechnology. By gathering high-quality contributions from multidisciplinary teams, we seek to explore innovative strategies to discover, characterize, optimize, and apply microfungal metabolites, thereby promoting the transition from laboratory findings to practical industrial and pharmaceutical applications.

Microfungi have a remarkable metabolic capacity, producing structurally diverse secondary metabolites that include natural pigments, biosurfactants, and potent antimicrobial agents. These compounds exhibit wide-ranging applications in health, food, cosmetics, agriculture, and environmental biotechnology.

Recent advances in molecular biology, metabolomics, and process engineering have accelerated the discovery and production of these bioactive molecules. Nonetheless, the potential of microfungi remains largely untapped due to limited strain exploration, lack of optimized production systems, and challenges in regulatory approval for industrial and clinical use.

This Research Topic builds on this context, highlighting the importance of integrating basic research, applied biotechnology, and industrial perspectives to fully unlock the potential of microfungi as sustainable sources of high-value compounds. This Research Topic invites contributions on all aspects of high-value compound discovery and application from microfungi, including:

• Isolation, identification, and characterization of bioactive strains.

• Biosynthetic pathway elucidation using omics approaches.

• Optimization of fermentation processes (submerged and solid-state).

• Extraction, purification, and chemical characterization of pigments, biosurfactants, antimicrobials, enzymes and other bioactive molecules.

• Evaluation of biological activities (antimicrobial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, etc.).

We welcome Original Research articles, Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Methods, and Perspectives that address these subjects.

Please note that Microbiotechnology does not consider descriptive studies that are solely based on amplicon (e.g., 16S rRNA) profiles or comparisons of nucleic acid extracts (e.g., metagenomics), unless they are accompanied by a clear hypothesis and experimentation and provide insight into the microbiological system or process being studied.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Microfungi, Antimicrobial compounds, Microfungal pigments, Microbial biosurfactants, Microfungal biotechnology, Industrial applications, High-value compounds, Fungal bioactive compounds

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.