Antibiotics from Mushrooms

버섯의 항생물질(抗生物質)

Antibiotics which produced by mushrooms discovered for last 40 years were described. Any antibiotic has not been used as infectious disease remudy but will be used as physiological active substance in near future. The antibiotic of mushrooms have not been published much in papers and do not have various finds of structures, compared to those of Streptomyces. Triple bond having compounds, terpenoid compounds aromatic compounds and some other compound have been known. These compounds are not dissolved well in water and mainly fat-soluble, except for cordycepin. Also, they are generally neutral, and some of them are acidic and almost none of them are basic compounds. However, acetylene and terpenoid compounds are the characteristic compounds of mushroom, and are not found in other microorganisms and plants. Especially, there are various terpenoid compounds in mushrooms. These metabolites of mushrooms were not used as antibiotic, but are interested as physiological active substance, such as enzyme inhibitor and immunomodulator. To promote studying on the antibiotics of mushroom, new screening methods must be developed, because strain belonged to the different genus produces different antibiotics, even though mushrooms belonged to the same genus and species. It is also known that mushrooms collected in different areas produce different antibiotics. Now, it is difficult to separate each pure compound from mushroom. It is important to find mushrooms which is impossible to cultivate artificially, or grow in the back land where is difficult to collect. Thousands of mushrooms grow on earth now, so that which species will be screened if not known. The biochemical and mycological study for usability of the metabolites of mushrooms is thought, as one of the important research areas, must be performed.