Prospecção de fungos da caatinga produtores de antibióticos.

Abstract

Since ancient times mankind has used natural products in order to get cured of their diseases, and with the advent of biochemistry and the discovery of microorganisms have brought a new source of natural substances to be used as medicines. Today, with the greatest diversity of pathogens and multidrug-resistant bacteria, this is a major focus of biotechnology: the search for new bioactive compounds, which will become a product of drug use. Faced with this, this project aimed to search for fungi, which are major producers of antibiotics, in a harsh environment and poorly explored, as is the Caatinga, in order innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. These fungi were collected and analyzed for their potential to produce antimicrobial compounds against two bacterial strains Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. All of the new 44 fungal specimens show some antimicrobial activity, of which 86,36% possessed activity against both, E. coli and S. aureus, and 13,63% activity against only one of these bacteria, with emphasis on specimens named CDSA92 and CDSA81, that showed inhibition zones against bacteria strains, about 23mm and 15mm diameter, respectively.