Isolation of fungi using the diffusion chamber device FIND technology

Area of Science:

• Mycology
• Natural Products Chemistry
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Fungi are prolific producers of diverse bioactive metabolites.
• Isolation of rare fungi is crucial for discovering novel compounds.
• Existing methods often struggle with culturing rare or unculturable fungal species.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate the Fungal one-step IsolatioN Device (FIND) for isolating rare fungi.
• To assess the efficacy of FIND in retrieving fungi from various environmental samples.
• To explore the chemical diversity of secondary metabolites from newly isolated fungal strains.

Main Methods:

• The FIND technology utilizes a multi-chambered micro agar plate for single-spore or fragment isolation.
• The device is incubated in the original environmental conditions (terrestrial soil, marine sediment, seawater) to promote fungal growth.
• Axenic fungal cultures were obtained and subjected to metabolite profiling.

Main Results:

• FIND successfully yielded axenic cultures of 12 distinct filamentous fungi from diverse environmental sources.
• The marine-adapted strain Heydenia cf. alpina was isolated using the FIND device.
• Two novel terpenoids were identified as the first reported secondary metabolites from the genus Heydenia.

Conclusions:

• The FIND technology is an effective tool for isolating rare and previously uncultured fungi from environmental samples.
• This method facilitates the discovery of novel bioactive compounds from fungal sources.
• The identification of new terpenoids from Heydenia cf. alpina expands the known chemical repertoire of this fungal genus.