Abstract

Although a large number of secondary metabolites are produced by endophytic fungi, which are non-essential, this may serve as an ecological advantage to them in certain environments. Pharmaceutically useful compounds, pigments, plant growth regulators, and mycotoxins are included in the mentioned metabolites. Myrothecium inundatum and Paramyrothecium nigrum endophytic fungi were isolated from Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don, Vinca major L., Vinca herbacea Waldst. & Kit. and Vinca minor L. plants found in Iran and screened for antimicrobial and anti proliferative activity. Fungal growth inhibition, conidial cytotoxicity, minimum inhibitory and minimum bactericidal concentration were assessed through statistical methods. According to the result, crude ethyl acetate extract of Pa. nigrum CR 47 isolate was for TLC analysis and Cell viability was evaluated by MTT assay. The active band from TLC was subjected to GC-MS analysis. Our data indicated that both the intra-cellular extracts and extra-cellular extracts obtained from all the endophytic isolates had significant cytotoxic and antimicrobial effects. The TLC result of Pa. nigrum CR 47 isolate indicated that one out of five spots had cytotoxic activity in the bioassays, with Rf value of 0.40 with an IC50 value of 5 µg / mL. The cytotoxic compounds were identified as γ-butyrolactone , limonene, dodecanoic ,3- hydroxy-4H-pyran-4-one, benzeneˏ2-chloro-1-methyl-4-nitro ester and methyl 2, 4- dihydroxy-6-methyl-benzoate. Altogether, both of fungal species were new records for mycobiota of Iran. Therefore, the fungal endophytes from Apocynaceae plants may serve as new sources for the discovery of bio molecules and thus deserve more profound investigations in the future.