Fungus produces active agent in a medicinal herb
Tatarinow's aster is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a number of ailments; the plant contains an active ingredient known as astin—and it is this agent which cancer researchers are now investigating. However, the plant does not produce the astins itself, as was assumed for a long time; instead, they are made by a fungus that lives in the tissue of the flowers. The discovery was made by an international team including Dr. Thomas Schafhauser and Professor Wolfgang Wohlleben from the University of Tübingen, and Dr. Linda Jahn, Professor Jutta Ludwig-Müller and Professor Karl-Heinz van Pée of the Technische Universität Dresden. The researchers were successful in isolating the fungus, Cyanodermella asteris, and in cultivating it independently of the host plant. They have therefore laid the foundations for large-scale biotechnological production of astins. The study has been published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.