Screening and characterization of paclitaxel-producing fungus \(\textit{Talaromyces wortmannii}\) WQF18 isolated from \(\textit{Cephalotaxus mannii }\)Hook. f..

Cephalotaxus mannii Hook. f. is a rare evergreen conifer native listed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, which utilized leukemia treatment. Although endophytic fungi from C. was reported before, their cytotoxic property has not been revealed yet. In present study, total 7 were isolated collected Ha Giang province, Vietnam, among isolate WQF18 active against 5 tested pathogens with inhibition zones ranging 18.0 ± 0.7 to 25.0 0.4 mm. addition, only ethyl acetate extract showed cytotoxicity on A549 and MCF7 cell lines IC50 values 69.6 2.3 µg/mL 78.6 1.6 µg/mL, respectively. PCR-based molecular screening that positive hits both 10-deacetylbaccatin III-10-O-acetyl transferase (dbat) taxadiene synthase (ts) genes involved paclitaxel biosynthesis observed isolate. Based morphological identification, identified as Talaromyces wortmannii WQF18. The presence T. further confirmed by dbat sequence alignment, phenotypic, HPLC-DAD analysis. To best our knowledge, this first report demonstrating paclitaxel-producing capability mannii. These findings provide new platform deciphering non-Taxus plants production.