Research of ephedra endophytic fungi in production of ephedra alkaloids / 中国生化药物杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To isolate endophytic fungi from the rare medicinal plants ephedra, detect the production of ephedrine alkaloids, and explore the optimum fermentation conditions.Methods The endophytic fungi were isolated from the herbaceous stems treated.The ephedrine alkaloids were preliminarily detected by Dragendorff's reagent.The fungi strains producing ephedrine alkaloids were screened by HPLC method with reference substance of ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and methephedrine.After the optimum carbon source and nitrogen source were determined with total ephedrine alkaloids as evaluation indicators by HPLC, the orthogonal test of L16 (45) was designed to investigate five levels of carbon source amount, nitrogen source amount, pH value, temperature, fermentation time.Results The ephedra herbaceous stems endophytic fungus-Es2 mycelium extract after fermentation contained ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and methephedrine.Es3 mycelium extract containing pseudoephedrine after fermentation.Lactose and ammonium sulfate were as the most suitable carbon source and nitrogen source of Es2 fermentation to produce ephedrine alkaloids.Es produced the highest yield of ephedra alkaloids when the carbon source 30 g/L, nitrogen source 4 g/L, pH5.0, temperature 30℃, fermented for 8 days.Conclusion The ephedrine alkaloids of industrial production could be realized by microorganism fermentation method, which has very important significance to alleviate the ephedrine market demand pressure on the environment.