The Fungal Pharmacy: A Journey Into the Secondary Metabolites of Mangrove Endophytes

Ezequiel Cruz Rosa

University of South Florida

The use of antimicrobials in the last decades has led to an epidemic of antimicrobial drug resistant microbes which pose a major threat that humans. ESKAPE pathogens (E. faecium, S. aureus, K. pneumoniae, A. baumannii, P. aeruginosa & E. spp.) as well as C. auris & C. albicans Cause a significant number of infections and deaths in humans. One potential source of novel antimicrobial compounds is mangrove derived endophytic fungi. These produce secondary metabolites that are used in nature to protect its host plant from a vast array of infections. This study aims to induce new chemistry in these endophytes using epigenetic modification, isolate these secondary metabolites through a bioassay guided approach and elucidate the structure of these bioactive compounds through the use of NMR spectra as well as HRMS while dereplicating nuisance compounds through the use of Molecular networking, A.I. tools (SMART NMR) and Neural network tools (DeepSAT) .