Huawei Zhang

This review focuses on new endophyte-related findings in biology and ecology, and also summarises the various metabolites isolated from endophytes.

Microbial secondary metabolites (MSMs) have played and continue to play a highly significant role in the drug discovery and development process. Genetically, MSM chemical structures are biologically synthesized by microbial gene clusters. Recently, however, the speed of new bioactive MSM discovery has been slowing down due to consistent employment of conventional cultivation and isolation procedure. In order to alleviate this challenge, a number of new approaches have been developed. The strategy of one strain many compounds (OSMAC) has been shown as a simple and powerful tool that can activate many silent biogenetic gene clusters in microorganisms to make more natural products. This review highlights important and successful examples using OSMAC approaches, which covers changing medium composition and cultivation status, co-cultivation with other strain(s), adding enzyme inhibitor(s) and MSM biosynthetic precursor(s). Available evidences had shown that variation of cultivation condition is the most effective way to produce more MSMs and facilitate the discovery of new therapeutic agents.

Marine-derived antioxidant polysaccharides have aroused extensive attention because of their potential nutritional and therapeutic benefits. However, the comprehensive comparison of identified marine-derived antioxidant polysaccharides is still inaccessible, which would facilitate the discovery of more efficient antioxidants from marine organisms. Thus, this review summarizes the sources, chemical composition, structural characteristics, and antioxidant capacity of marine antioxidant polysaccharides, as well as their protective in vivo effects mediated by antioxidative stress reported in the last few years (2013-2019), and especially highlights the dominant role of marine algae as antioxidant polysaccharide source. In addition, the relationships between the chemical composition and structural characteristics of marine antioxidant polysaccharides with their antioxidant capacity were also discussed. The antioxidant activity was found to be determined by multiple factors, including molecular weight, monosaccharide composition, sulfate position and its degree.

A simple and efficient microwave-assisted extraction of polyphenols from industrial apple pomace was developed and optimized by the maximization of the yield using response surface methodology. A Box-Behnken design was used to monitor the effect of microwave power, extraction time, ethanol concentration and ratio of solvent to raw material (g/mL) on the polyphenols yield. The results showed that the optimal conditions were as follows: microwave power 650.4 W, extraction time 53.7 s, ethanol concentration 62.1% and ratio of solvent to raw material 22.9:1. Validation tests indicated that the actual yield of polyphenols was 62.68±0.35 mg gallic acid equivalents per 100 g dry apple pomace with RSD=0.86% (n=5) under the optimal conditions, which was in good agreement with the predicted yield and higher than those of reflux and ultrasonic-assisted extraction methods. HPLC analysis indicated that the major polyphenols of apple pomace consisted of chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, syrigin, procyanidin B2, (-)-epicatechin, cinnamic acid, coumaric acid, phlorizin and quercetin, of which procyanidin B2 had the highest content of 219.4 mg/kg.