Abstract:

Medicinal plants have been used in traditional medicine since antiquity,and they represent a very important source of natural medicines such as antimicrobial,antiviral,and antitumor molecules. Endophytic microorganisms exist widely inside the healthy tissues of living plants,and are important components of plant micro-ecosystems. In fact,many studies have demonstrated the biological and economic importance of endophytes in medicinal plants. Over the long period of their evolution,these microbes have established some special relationships with their host plants,which can significantly influence the formation of bioactive metabolic products in hosts,then affect the quality and quantity of crude drugs derived from these medicinal plants. This paper focuses on the increasing knowledge of relationships between endophytes and pharmaco-active compounds in medicinal plants through reviewing of the published data of studying endophytes in medical plants in recent years. The analytical results summarize the studies on endophytes isolated from medicinal plants,including their biodiversity,pharmacological potential,and biosynthetic mechanism affecting the formation of pharmaco-active compounds. The aim of this review is to elucidate the role mechanism and importance of endophytes in the production of natural medicines. Understanding such knowledge can help researchers apply them more effectively to improve the quality of medicinal plants,or exploit more and better natural medicines from plants or endophytes resources.

Key words: endophytic microorganism, medicinal plants, pharmaco-active compounds, natural medicine