Novel symbiotrophic endophytes

Abstract

Endophytes are microorganisms that reside in the tissues of living plants without causing any immediate overt negative effect (Bacon and White 2000). Of the nearly 300,000 plants species that exist on the earth, each individual plant is host to one or more endophytes (Strobel and Daisy 2003). These endophytes are relatively unstudied and are potential sources of novel natural products for exploitation in medicine, agriculture, and industry. Very few of these endophytes have been studied to date, and this opens a new opportunity to find out novel endophytes in myriads of ecological niches. One of the important facets of these endophytes is their evolution with plants over a period of millennia that makes them live in a symbiotrophic relationship in such a way that both becomes indispensible to each other. While the symptomless nature of endophyte occupation in plant tissue has prompted the focusing on symbiotic or mutualistic relationships between endophytes and their hosts, the observed biodiversity of endophytes suggests they can also be aggressive saprophytes or opportunistic pathogens (Strobel and Daisy 2003).