Detection of mycotoxins from some micro and macro endophytic ascomycetes fungi

The immense importance of endophytic fungi in industries has attracted the attention of researchers for their chemical and biochemical properties. Some of ascomycetes fungal species like Penicillium, Aspergillus, Neurospora are the novel source of secondary metabolites such as mycotoxins, tannins, alkaloids, terpenoids, etc. Some of the fungal secondary metabolites are useful in pharmaceutical industries for drugs production whereas some mycotoxins are screened to be harmful in most of the cases; hence, it becomes imperative to know the biochemical aspects of wild fungi regarding their usage. This study involves screening of mycotoxins from some endophytic micro ascomycetes fungi e.g. Fusarium solani, Penicillium chrysogenum, Geotrichum candidum (micro fungi) and macro ascomycetes fungi e.g. Xylaria hypoxylon and Daldinia concentrica (macro fungi) through Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) technique which is a simple physicochemical laboratory procedure and conventional analytical method for quantifying the actual amounts of toxins. In TLC, different solvent systems were used for extrication of compounds/mycotoxins based on their colours. The identification of mycotoxins was done by toning the colours on the TLC plates as per available standard methods and protocols in laboratory. The probable detected and tentatively identified mycotoxins on Thin Layer Chromatographic plates that appeared in different colours were Zearlenone (faint blue), Citrinin (yellow or bright yellow), Aspertoxin (pink), Nivalenon acetate (orange) and Diacetoxiscipenol & Beauvericin (light brown to brown). This kind of studies can be helpful in categorizing any wild fungal species as toxigenic or non-toxigenic based on their natural occurrence and either edible or inedible in nature. There are also some mycotoxins that possess medicinal properties and some are harmful, thus, this detection can open new outlooks and prospects of new wild fungal source/s of medicinally important compounds/mycotoxins. The future proposal of this study is to further identify the particular mycotoxin/s available in target fungal species by standardizing the isolation and identification through some advance techniques.