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A Journey of a Fungal Entophyte: From Host to Human Health Welfare
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Dr Madhuree Kumari*
Email: madhureek@iisc.ac.in
Hello World! I am a fungal endophyte, and the scientific community has identified me as Colletotrichum sp. by
ITS sequencing done for fungal identification. We, endophytes, can live inside any living organism in any condition. Yes! We can be inside you as well. There is nothing to be afraid of. We do not harm our hosts or cause them a disease. We help our hosts to combat many diseases and overcome challenging situations by producing some useful compounds known
as secondary metabolites.
The laboratory of Professor C.
Jayabaskaran (IISc Bengaluru) is trying to get something out of me, which will help to combat cancer. Nowadays, anti-cancer medicines are very costly, and cancer remains one of the most dreaded diseases. The laboratory is working
on endophytes from medicinal plants and the marine environment, and now the girl, who is writing my story, along with her colleagues, is trying to find me from lichens. Earlier, she found some of my siblings from the Arabian Sea inside brown algae, which she reported in the Frontiers in Microbiology, 2018.
Well, a lichen is a symbiotic association between an algae/cyanobacteria and fungi. It is a mutual relationship between the two where they have to live, adapt, and grow old together. Coping with different microenvironments has resulted in the production of some useful unique compounds by lichens which are often neglected. I, being an endophyte of lichens, has barely been studied for human welfare. After living with the lichen for so long, I may have possessed some of its properties and
* Dr Madhuree Kumari, Post Doctoral Fellow from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, is pursuing her research on “Impact of Nanotized Drug(s) Isolated from Endophytic Fungi on Mechanism of Cell Death and Signalling Pathway in Cancer Cells”. Her popular science story entitled “A Journey of a Fungal Entophyte: From Host to Human Health Welfare” has been selected for AWSAR Award.
