Brindha Lakshmi*, Kannan Kilavan Packiam and Nandhini N
Department of Microbiology Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
*Corresponding Author: Brindha Lakshmi, Department of Microbiology Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Received: November 25, 2019; Published: December 04, 2019
By definition, Endophytic fungi are the fungi that spend a part or whole of their life cycle. These fungi colonize the healthy tissues of host plants either inter or intracellularly typically without causing apparent symptoms of disease and without any immediate, negative overt results with the only exception that the fruit bearing structure of these endophytes might emerge out of the plant tissue for reproduction. A newly emerged leaf or any part of the plant may be colonized by a variety of fungal colonies in an asymptomatic or in some cases, symbiotic manner. The main objective of the current study is to scientifically validate the antioxidant activity of methanolic and aqueous extracts of endophytic fungi. Antioxidants are those that inhibit the oxidation by controlling the production of free radicals, thereby stopping the chain reaction that may damage the cells of the organism. The plant endophytes under investigation were Phoma sp., Colletotrichum spiralis, Chaetomium sp. (1) and Chaetomium sp. (2). Endophytes were isolated from plants and were cultured in Potato dextrose broth. The dry biomass yield of all the four endophytes was subjected for the study. The aqueous and methanolic extracts of the four endophytes were subjected to further investigation The total phenolic content of the four different fungal extracts were determined by using Folin-ciocalteau reagent method. DPPH (1,1- diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl) radical assay was performed to determine the percentage of radical scavenging activity for all the four analytes. A general increase in the antioxidant activity was observed in methanolic extracts when compared with aqueous extracts.
Keywords: Endophytes; Antioxidants; Free Radicals; Folin-Ciocalteau; DPPH Radical Assay
Citation: Brindha Lakshmi., et al. "A Comparative Study on the Antioxidant Activity of Four Different Fungal Endophytes".Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.1 (2020): 33-41.
Copyright: © 2020 Brindha Lakshmi., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.