Enhanced delignification and production of bioactive compounds in wheat straw by optimizing sterilization methods for Irpex lacteus fermentation

One of the exciting movements in microbial sciences has been a refocusing and revitalization of efforts to mine the fungal secondary metabolome. The magnitude of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in a single filamentous fungal genome combined with the historic number of sequenced genomes suggests that the secondary metabolite wealth of filamentous fungi is largely untapped. Mining algorithms and scalable expression platforms have greatly expanded access to the chemical repertoire of fungal-derived secondary metabolites. In this Review, I discuss new insights into the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of BGCs and the ecological roles of fungal secondary metabolites in warfare, defence and development. I also explore avenues for the identification of new fungal metabolites and the challenges in harvesting fungal-derived secondary metabolites.

Phenolic compounds are parts of secondary metabolites mostly found in plant species with enormous structural diversities. They can exist as glycosides or aglycones; matrix or free-bound compounds; and comprising mostly polymerized or monomer structures. Additionally, these compounds are not universally dispensed within plants with varied stability. This has contributed to challenging extraction processes; implying that employing a single step or inappropriate extraction technique might change the recovery of phenolic components from the plant samples. Hence, it is important to select an appropriate extraction method so as to recover the targeted phenolic compounds. This is will helps to recover substantial yields from the sample matrix. Therefore, this review mainly focuses on the phenolic compounds and several methods of extraction that are used to obtaining them from plant materials. These extraction methods includes both conventional and unconventional techniques. • Phenolic compounds from natural sources. • Methods of extracting phenolic compounds. • Selection of an appropriate extraction method to recover the targeted phenolic compounds from plant materials.