ISOLATION AND MOLECULAR IDENTIFICATION OF THE ENDOPHYTIC FUNGUS Paraphoma radicina ASSOCIATED WITH Helichrysum mussae
Abstract
Endophytic fungi associated with medicinal plants represent an important and renewable source of chemically diverse natural products and bioactive secondary metabolites. In particular, plants belonging to the genus Helichrysum are recognized for their medicinal properties and diverse phytochemical composition, while their associated endophytic fungal communities remain comparatively underexplored. The present study aimed to isolate and identify endophytic fungi associated with Helichrysum mussae and to establish a collection of fungal strains for subsequent investigation of their biological and biosynthetic potential. Healthy plant tissues were collected and subjected to surface sterilization followed by cultivation on potato dextrose agar. The obtained strains were initially characterized based on their morphological and cultural characteristics. Molecular identification of selected isolates was subsequently performed using sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of ribosomal DNA. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted using the obtained ITS sequence together with reference sequences of closely related taxa. The resulting neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree demonstrated that isolate H29 clustered closely with Paraphoma radicina (NR_156556.1), supporting its identification as Paraphoma radicina. The H29 isolate formed a distinct branch closely associated with the reference P. radicina sequence, within a well-supported Paraphoma clade containing other representative species of the genus.
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