Diversity and antimitotic activity of taxol-producing endophytic fungi isolated from Himalayan yew

Endophytic fungi represent an under explored resource of novel lead compounds and have the capacity to produce diverse classes of plant secondary metabolites. Here, we investigated the endophytic fungal diversity of taxol-producing endophytes from Taxus baccata L. ssp. wallichiana (Zucc.) Pilger and also tested the antimitogenic effect of fungal taxol using potato disc tumor assay. A total of 60 fungal endophytes were isolated from the inner bark (phloem-cambium) of T. baccata ssp. wallichiana , collected from different locations of the northern Himalayan region. Two key genes, DBAT (10-deacetylbaccatin III-10- O -acetyl transferase) and BAPT (C-13 phenylpropanoid side chain-CoA acyltransferase), involved in taxol biosynthesis were used as molecular markers for the screening of taxol-producing strains. Five representative species gave positive amplification hits by molecular marker screening with the bapt gene. These fungi were characterized and identified based on morphological and molecular identification. The taxol-producing capability of these endophytic fungi was validated by HPLC-MS. Among the five taxol-producing fungi, the highest yield of taxol was found to be 66.25 μg/l by Fusarium redolens compared with those of the other four strains.