Endophytes as a Source of High-Value, Bioactive Metabolites

Abstract

Endophytes, microbes that reside within plants, are capable of producing high-value bioactive metabolites with diverse biological activities such as antimicrobial, insecticidal, antidiabetic, antioxidant, anticancer, etc. Endophytes thus represent a subset of microbes that reside in unique niches and, if explored properly, may prove to be a reservoir of bioactive principles. Despite this, less than 5% of total plant diversity has been screened for its endophyte content. Moreover, detailed examination of natural products and their bioactivities have been carried out for even lesser number of endophytes. Further, genome sequencing of several microbes has revealed that the potential of microbes to produce secondary metabolites has been substantially underestimated because many of the secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters are silent under standard laboratory growth conditions. This chapter provides an overview of microbial natural products that have been isolated from endophytes and discusses the above issues and possible mitigation strategies.