8 Biotechnology and Bioinformatics of Endophytes …
193
including metal precipitation, biodegradation, biotransformation, bioaccumulation,
and sequestration (Zhu et al. 2014; Babu et al. 2015).
d. Medicinal application
Medicinal plants constitute a reservoir of tremendous bioactive metabolites used
for disease treatments from ancient times (Paramanantham et al. 2019). During
the last few decades, researchers have discovered several interesting medicinal/pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics originating from diverse endophytic
microbes living inside medicinal and non-medicinal plants. They have inherent
potentials to produce bioactive metabolic compounds possessing therapeutic properties to treat numerous infections and diseases (Kusari et al. 2014) such as cancer,
diabetic, microbial, fungal, and viral diseases (Strobel and Daisy 2003; Huang et al.
2007; Yu et al. 2010; Kharwar et al. 2011; Akone et al. 2016; Mefteh et al. 2017;
Venieraki et al. 2017). Singh and Dubey (2015) reported that natural compounds
originating from the medicinal plants-endophytes association, constitute above 50%
of natural products in the market and this was further confirmed by Passari et al.
(2017). The same endophytic strain isolated from several medicinal plants could
produce diverse biological activities through the production of several medicinal
compounds (Tan and Zou 2001; Khiralla et al. 2017).
8.8 Omic Approaches for Endophytes
Traditional methods used to identify and characterize endophytic microbes were
supported by in silico approaches which help in understanding the functional potentialities of endophytes (Gianoulis et al. 2012; Nicolas et al. 2014; Chetia et al. 2019).
The number of microbial omic studies have been developed rapidly in the recent
years due to the next generation sequencing (NGS) methods which are increasingly
lowering their costs (Kodama et al. 2011; Kaul et al. 2016; Belbahri et al. 2017; Slama
et al. 2018; Cheffi et al. 2019). Nowadays, there is a large amount of whole bacterial
and fungal genomes that have been sequenced and stored in several open-access
databases and platforms (Figs. 8.5 and 8.6). The combination of omic approaches
(genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomics, and proteomics) allowed exploration of
endophytes potentials and their interactions with hosts. In fact, (i) genomic is the
technology of total genome sequencing of microorganisms (Campisano et al. 2014;
Akinsanya et al. 2015; Belbahri et al. 2017; Sengupta et al. 2017; Correa-Galeote
et al. 2018), (ii) transcriptomic studies provide instructions about gene status (AguiarPulido et al. 2016), (iii) metabolomic allow identification of novel secondary metabolites exhibited by microbes (Rasmussen et al. 2011; Chetia et al. 2019), (iv) lastly
proteomic is a multivariate technology of endophytic proteins expression (Kaul et al.
2016; Peng et al. 2019).
193
including metal precipitation, biodegradation, biotransformation, bioaccumulation,
and sequestration (Zhu et al. 2014; Babu et al. 2015).
d. Medicinal application
Medicinal plants constitute a reservoir of tremendous bioactive metabolites used
for disease treatments from ancient times (Paramanantham et al. 2019). During
the last few decades, researchers have discovered several interesting medicinal/pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics originating from diverse endophytic
microbes living inside medicinal and non-medicinal plants. They have inherent
potentials to produce bioactive metabolic compounds possessing therapeutic properties to treat numerous infections and diseases (Kusari et al. 2014) such as cancer,
diabetic, microbial, fungal, and viral diseases (Strobel and Daisy 2003; Huang et al.
2007; Yu et al. 2010; Kharwar et al. 2011; Akone et al. 2016; Mefteh et al. 2017;
Venieraki et al. 2017). Singh and Dubey (2015) reported that natural compounds
originating from the medicinal plants-endophytes association, constitute above 50%
of natural products in the market and this was further confirmed by Passari et al.
(2017). The same endophytic strain isolated from several medicinal plants could
produce diverse biological activities through the production of several medicinal
compounds (Tan and Zou 2001; Khiralla et al. 2017).
8.8 Omic Approaches for Endophytes
Traditional methods used to identify and characterize endophytic microbes were
supported by in silico approaches which help in understanding the functional potentialities of endophytes (Gianoulis et al. 2012; Nicolas et al. 2014; Chetia et al. 2019).
The number of microbial omic studies have been developed rapidly in the recent
years due to the next generation sequencing (NGS) methods which are increasingly
lowering their costs (Kodama et al. 2011; Kaul et al. 2016; Belbahri et al. 2017; Slama
et al. 2018; Cheffi et al. 2019). Nowadays, there is a large amount of whole bacterial
and fungal genomes that have been sequenced and stored in several open-access
databases and platforms (Figs. 8.5 and 8.6). The combination of omic approaches
(genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomics, and proteomics) allowed exploration of
endophytes potentials and their interactions with hosts. In fact, (i) genomic is the
technology of total genome sequencing of microorganisms (Campisano et al. 2014;
Akinsanya et al. 2015; Belbahri et al. 2017; Sengupta et al. 2017; Correa-Galeote
et al. 2018), (ii) transcriptomic studies provide instructions about gene status (AguiarPulido et al. 2016), (iii) metabolomic allow identification of novel secondary metabolites exhibited by microbes (Rasmussen et al. 2011; Chetia et al. 2019), (iv) lastly
proteomic is a multivariate technology of endophytic proteins expression (Kaul et al.
2016; Peng et al. 2019).