Background: Secondary fungal metabolites are important sources for new drugs against infectious diseases and cancers. Methods: To obtain a library with enough diversity, we collected about 2,395 soil samples and 2,324 plant samples from 36 regions in Africa, Asia, and North America. The collection areas covered various climate zones in the world. We examined the usability of the global fungal extract library (GFEL) against parasitic malaria transmission, Gram-positive and negative bacterial pathogens, and leukemia cells. Results: Nearly ten thousand fungal strains were isolated. Sequences of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) from 40 randomly selected strains showed that over 80% were unique. Screening GFEL, we found that the fungal extract from was able to block transmission to , and the fungal extract from was able to kill myelogenous leukemia cell line K562. We also identified a set of candidate fungal extracts against bacterial pathogens.
Article
A diverse global fungal library for drug discovery
Biomolecular Sciences Institute: Faculty Publications
Date of this Version
1-1-2020
Document Type
Article
Rights
Default Rights (Non-Creative Commons)
Abstract
DOI
10.7717/peerj.10392
Identifier
33312768
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Citation Information
Niu G, Annamalai T, Wang X, Li S, Munga S, Niu G, Tse-Dinh Y, Li J. 2020. A diverse global fungal library for drug discovery. PeerJ 8:e10392 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10392
DOI 10.7717/peerj.10392 Copyright 2020 Niu et al. Distributed under Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0