The fungal treasure chest: Spore origins?

Secondary metabolite production in fungi is a complex process coupled with morphological development (Calvo et al., 2002). Secondary metabolites, considered to afford fitness attributes to the producing organism (Rohlfs et al., 2007), have tremendous importance to humankind in that they display a broad range of useful antibiotic and pharmaceutical activities as well as less desirable immunosuppressant and toxic activities. A 2005 literature survey of fungal metabolites, covering 1500 compounds that were isolated and characterized between 1993 and 2001, showed that more than half of the molecules had antibacterial, antifungal or antitumor activity (Pelaez et al., 2005).