In-vitro investigation on the biological activities of squalene derived from the soil fungus Talaromyces pinophilus

Meghashyama Prabhakara Bhat; Muthuraj Rudrappa; Anil Hugar; Pooja Vidyasagar Gunagambhire; Raju Suresh Kumar; Sreenivasa Nayaka; Abdulrahman I Almansour; Karthikeyan Perumal

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21461

In-vitro investigation on the biological activities of squalene derived from the soil fungus Talaromyces pinophilus

Heliyon. 2023 Oct 31;9(11):e21461. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21461. eCollection 2023 Nov.

Authors

Meghashyama Prabhakara Bhat¹, Muthuraj Rudrappa¹, Anil Hugar¹, Pooja Vidyasagar Gunagambhire¹, Raju Suresh Kumar², Sreenivasa Nayaka¹, Abdulrahman I Almansour², Karthikeyan Perumal³

Affiliations

¹ P.G. Department of Studies in Botany, Karnatak University, Dharwad, 580001, Karnataka, India.
² Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box. 2455, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University, 151 W. Woodruff Ave, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.

Abstract

The consistent increase in multidrug resistance among pathogens and increased cancer incidence are serious public health concerns and threaten humans by killing countless lives. In the present study, Talaromyces pinophilus CJ15 was characterized and evaluated for its antibacterial, candidicidal and cytotoxic activities. The selected isolate Talaromyces pinophilus CJ15 with 18S rRNA gene sequence of 1021 base pairs exhibited antifungal activity on plant pathogens via dual culture. The GC-MS profiling of crude extract illustrated the existence of many bioactive macromolecules which include squalene belonging to the terpenoids family. The biological macromolecules in the bioactive fraction of CJ15 exhibited increasing antibacterial activity with an increase in concentration such that the highest activity was recorded against Shigella flexneri with 15, 18, 20, and 24 mm inhibition zones at 25, 50, 75 and 100 μl concentrations, respectively. The squalene, having a molecular weight of 410.718 g/mol, displayed candidicidal activity with a right-side shifted log phase in the growth curve of all the treated Candida species, indicating delayed exponential growth. In cytotoxic activity, the extracted squalene exhibited an IC₅₀ concentration of 26.22 μg/ml against JURKAT cells and induced apoptosis-induced cell death. This study's outcomes encourage the researchers to explore further the development of new and improved bioactive macromolecules that could help to prevent infections and human blood cancer.

Keywords: Antibacterial activity; Anticancer activity; Candidicidal activity; Human blood cancer; Squalene; Talaromyces pinophilus.