Endophytic Fungi: Recent Advances in Identification and Explorations

Endophytes have profound impacts on plants, including beneficial effects on agriculturally important traits. Endophytic fungi inhabit in the internal living tissues of almost all known plants, without causing any negative effect on their host plant. Endophytic fungi are involved in the production of various bioactive natural products and are thus known for enhancing plant growth, increasing their fitness, and strengthening tolerances to various abiotic and biotic stresses. Traditionally, culture based identification of endophytic fungi in natural environments has been limited due to non-culturable and non-sporulating nature of most of the endophytic fungi. Advances in molecular technique, namely ITS sequencing, pyrosequencing, DNA barcoding, fatty acid methyl ester analysis (FAME), and MALDI-TOF led to the rapid and efficient identification of both culture dependent and independent fungi. In order to explore the potential of fungal endophytes, it is essential to identify the communal diversity as their composition is highly influenced by age, tissues, and genotype of host plants. The better understanding of endophytic diversity led to their exploration for important sources of bioactive natural products having enormous potential for the discovery of new molecules for drug discovery, industrial use, and agricultural applications.