Bioprospecting of South African plants as a unique resource for bioactive endophytic microbes

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dc.contributor.author Abdalla, Muna Ali
dc.contributor.author McGaw, Lyndy Joy
dc.date.accessioned 2019-10-03T08:17:30Z
dc.date.available 2019-10-03T08:17:30Z
dc.date.issued 2018-05-17
dc.description.abstract South Africa has a long history and strong belief in traditional herbal medicines. Using ethnobotanical knowledge as a lead, a large number of South African medicinal plants have been discovered to possess a wide spectrum of pharmacological properties. In this review, bioprospecting of endophytes is highlighted by following the advantages of the ethnomedicinal approach together with identifying unique medicinal plants where biological activity may be due to endophytes. This review focuses on the current status of South African medicinal plants to motivate the research community to harness the benefits of ethnobotanical knowledge to investigate the presence of endophyticmicrobes from the most potent South Africanmedicinal plants. The potential chemical diversity and subsequent putative medicinal value of endophytes is deserving of further research. A timely and comprehensive review of literature on recently isolated endophytes and their metabolites was conducted.Worldwide literature from the last 2 years demonstrating the importance of ethnobotanical knowledge as a useful approach to discover endophytic microbes was documented. Information was obtained from scientific databases such as Pubmed, Scopus, Scirus, Google Scholar, Dictionary of Natural Products, Chemical Abstracts Services, official websites, and scientific databases on ethnomedicines. Primary sources such as books, reports, dissertations, and thesises were accessed where available. Recently published information on isolated endophytes with promising bioactivity and their bioactive natural products worldwide (2015-2017) was summarized. The potential value of South African medicinal plants as sources of endophytes is discussed. The insights provided through this study indicate that medicinal plants in South Africa are highly under-investigated sources of potentially useful endophytic microbes. New approaches may be used by medicinal plant scientists for further exploration of natural products from endophytic fungi and bacteria in southern Africa. en_ZA
dc.description.department Paraclinical Sciences en_ZA
dc.description.librarian am2019 en_ZA
dc.description.sponsorship The University of Pretoria, South Africa en_ZA
dc.description.uri http://www.frontiersin.org/Pharmacology en_ZA
dc.identifier.citation Abdalla MA and McGaw LJ (2018) Bioprospecting of South African Plants as a Unique Resource for Bioactive Endophytic Microbes. Frontiers in Pharmacology 9:456. DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00456. en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn 1663-9812 (online)
dc.identifier.other 10.3389/fphar.2018.00456
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/71564
dc.language.iso en en_ZA
dc.publisher Frontiers Media en_ZA
dc.rights © 2018 Abdalla and McGaw. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). en_ZA
dc.subject South African medicinal plants en_ZA
dc.subject Secondary metabolites en_ZA
dc.subject Endophytes en_ZA
dc.subject Ethnobotanical approach en_ZA
dc.subject Biological activities en_ZA
dc.title Bioprospecting of South African plants as a unique resource for bioactive endophytic microbes en_ZA
dc.type Article en_ZA


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