Revealing of biodiversity and antimicrobial effects of Artemisia asiatica endophytes

Endophytic fungi produce a plethora of secondary metabolites, which may open new avenues to study their applicability in pharmaceuticals. Therefore, the present study focuses on the fungal endophytic community of Artemisia asiatica. During our work, fungal endophytes were isolated from a medicinal plant, A. asiatica. The culturable endophytic fungi were identifi ed using molecular techniques and biodiversity, richness and tissue specifi city were examined. As these microorganisms have been generally identifi ed as an abundant reservoir of novel antimicrobial compounds, the antimicrobial (i.e. antibacterial and antifungal) activities of the metabolites produced by the isolated fungi were studied. Numerous extracts containing the endophytic metabolites proved to be active against the applied test microorganisms including Gram-positive and Gramnegative bacteria, as well as yeasts and fi lamentous fungi, which can be examined in detail in the future and, based on the the chemical nature of these active metabolites, allow to discover novel bioactive metabolites.