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Aging-associated, non-transmissible chronic diseases (NTCD) such as cancer, dyslipidemia, and neurodegenerative disorders have been challenged through several strategies including the consumption of healthy foods and the development of new drugs for existing diseases. Consumer health consciousness is guiding market trends toward the development of additives and nutraceutical products of natural origin. Fungi produce several metabolites with bioactivity against NTCD as well as pigments, dyes, antioxidants, polysaccharides, and enzymes that can be explored as substitutes for synthetic food additives. Research in this area has increased the yields of metabolites for industrial applications through improving fermentation conditions, application of metabolic engineering techniques, and fungal genetic manipulation. Several modern hyphenated techniques have impressively increased the rate of research in this area, enabling the analysis of a large number of species and fermentative conditions. This review thus focuses on summarizing the nutritional, pharmacological, and economic importance of fungi and their metabolites resulting from applications in the aforementioned areas, examples of modern techniques for optimizing the production of fungi and their metabolites, and methodologies for the identification and analysis of these compounds.

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The white mulberry, Morus alba, is distributed worldwide and known for its antioxidant properties. Ethanol extract of six varieties of M. alba roots were studied (IZ 13/6, IZ 40, IZ 56/4, IZ 64, Indonesia, and Tigreada). From variety IZ 40, two secondary metabolites were isolated and unambiguously identified by 2D NMR experiments as morusin and mulberrofuran B. These were quantified in the varieties by liquid chromatography, recording 5.27-16.74% for the first, and 0.54-3.55% for the latter. Mulberrofuran B presented higher activity than morusin by phosphomolybdenum (1531.33 ± 20.28 mmol ascorbic acid/g) and ferrocyanide (14.39%) methods, ABTS (95.74 ± 4.21 µM) and DPPH (843.87 ± 10.65 µM) radical sequestration capacity, while morusin showed significant statistical correlation with antioxidant activity for some M. alba varieties. These results suggested that morusin influences antioxidant activity of M. alba in synergism with other compounds and can be a good chemical marker in this species.

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