METABOLITE PROFILING AND PHARMACEUTICAL POTENTIAL OF ENDOPHYTIC FUNGAL ISOLATE E (Aspergilus niger) VIA LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY–MASS SPECTROMETRY (LC-MS/MS)

Supiana Dian Nurtjahyani*, Heny Sulistyaningrum, Sulistiono, Moch. Amin, Ali Mustofa

Endophytic fungi represent a rich yet underexploited bioresource of novel pharmaceutical compounds. In this study, untargeted metabolite profiling of endophytic fungal isolate E (Aspergillus niger), isolated from the roots of Borassus flabellifer L. (palmyra palm), was conducted using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) on a Shimadzu LCMS-8040 system equipped with a Shim-pack FC-ODS column. The chromatographic run (50 min, isocratic 90% methanol) resolved 138 peaks that were tentatively annotated as distinct chemical constituents by spectral library matching. The metabolite profile revealed considerable chemodiversity, spanning primary amino acids (glutamic acid 2.90%, valine 2.43%, alanine 1.32%), piperidine alkamides ((E)-7-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-1-(piperidin-1-yl)hept-6-en-1-one 2.57%; (2E,4E,6E)-7-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-1-(piperidin-1-yl)hepta-2,4,6-trien-1-one 2.15%), phenolic acids and flavonoids (naringenin 1.16%, coumestrol 0.97%, apigenin 0.90%, caffeic acid 0.85%), and sterols and triterpenoids (ergosterol 0.21%, lanosterol 0.15%, stigmasterol 0.34%, alpha-amyrin 0.31%); values are expressed as relative peak area. Many of the annotated compounds have reported antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and cytotoxic activities, which highlights isolate E as a promising candidate for bioassay-guided investigation, biotechnological exploitation, and pharmaceutical development. Confirmation of compound identities with authentic standards and high-resolution MS/MS, together with bioactivity assays, is required.