Isolation And Diversity Study Of Endolichenic Fungi From Mt. Laojunshan, Lijiang, Yunnan

Lichen was recognized as a symbiosis between a fungus,the mycobiont, and a photosymthetic partner, the photobiont. Lichen is a kind of worldwide distribution orgnanism which able to live in many extreme environment conditions. A large amount of secondary metabolites with variety bio-activity were found in lichen and most of them are unique to lichen. Endolichenic fungi is a sort of fungi which inhabit in lichen thallus, reflecting the relatively high biodiversity. Recent years, a large amount of secondary metabolites with variety bio- activity were found in endolichenic fungi too.In this paper we attempted to isolate and culticate endolichenic fungi from lichen thalli and investigated endolichenic fungi diversity in Mt. Laojunshan, Lijiang, Yunnan. Some preliminary studies in the secondary metabolites of endolichenic fungi were carried out.The innovative method- cortex scrapping was firstly usd and 263 isolates were recovered from lichen thalli of 21 genera, the isolation rate was 9.80%. Based on the the anatomical and morphological characteristics of colony, 68 stains were screened out, by the phylogenetic analysis based on ITS nrDNA sequences, these fungal isolates were identified belong to Dothideomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Leotiomycetes, Lecanoromycetes, Sordariomycetes and some incertae sedis groups respectively. These fungal isolates strongly associated with 15 teleomorphic genera 6 anamorphic genera and 3 anamorphic genera of mitosporic Ascomycota, it indicated that endolichenic fungi is a kind of worldwide distribution orgnanism and shannon-viener index showed considerable diversity in endolichenic fungi.Until now, there are no reports on the new host of Elaphocordyceps. However, in our study, five isolates from lichen collected from Mt. Laojunshan belong to Elaphocordyceps, the five species of Elaphocordyceps were firstly detected within lichen thalli. This result suggests that lichen is possibly the new host of Elaphocordyceps and may provide unique ecological niches for them.The antimicrobial activity and the cytotoxic activity of 8 isolated endolichenic fungi were tested preliminarly. The result showed that 5 strains had activities against Monilia albican, 3 strains had activities against Escherichia coli, 3 strains had activities against Staphylococcus aureus, 3 strains had activities against Bacillus subtilis and no strain had activities against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In the cytotoxic activity test, 5 strains tested had the ability to inhibit the tumor cells for 50%.