Abstract

A highly potent secondary metabolite producing endophytic strain, Streptomyces sp. HUST012 was isolated from the stems of the medicinal plant Dracaena cochinchinensis Lour. Strain HUST012 showed antimicrobial and antitumor activities which were significantly much higher than those of dragon's blood extracted from D. cochinchinensis Lour. On further analysis, the strain was found to produce two metabolites, SPE-B11.8 (elucidated to be a novel metabolite (Z)-tridec-7-ene-1,2,13-tricarboxylic acid) and SPE-B5.4 (elucidated as Actinomycin-D). The Minimum Inhibitory Concentration values of SPE-B11.8 against a set of test bacterial organisms (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermis ATCC 35984, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, and Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 13883) ranged between 15.63 and 62.5 mu g/ml while that for SPE-B5.4 ranged between 0.04 and 2.24 mu g/ml. The compound SPE-B11.8 showed cytotoxic effect at 41.63 and 29.54 mu g/ml IC50-values against Hep G2 and MCF-7, respectively, while the compound SPE-B5.4 exhibited stronger activities against them at 0.23 and 0.18 mu g/ml IC50-values.