Bigger Data Approach to Analysis of Essential Oils and Their Antifungal Activity against Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans, and Cryptococcus neoformans.
With increasing drug resistance and the poor state of current antifungals, the need for new antifungals is urgent and growing. Therefore, we tested a variety of essential oils for antifungal activity. We report the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) values for a common set of 82 essential oils against Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans, and Cryptococcus neoformans. Generally, narrow-spectrum activity was found. However, C. neoformans was much more susceptible to inhibition by essential oils with over one-third of those tested having MIC values below 160 ppm. GC-MS analysis showed the essential oils to be chemically diverse, yet, the potentially active major constituents typically fell into a few general categories (i.e., terpenes, terpenoids, terpenols). While essential oils remain a rich source of potential antifungals, focus should shift to prioritizing activity from novel compounds outside the commonalities reported here, instead of simply identifying antifungal activity. Further, capitalizing on bigger data approaches can provide significant returns in expediting the identification of active components.
['Powers|Chelsea N|CN|', 'Satyal|Prabodh|P|', 'Mayo|John A|JA|', 'McFeeters|Hana|H|', 'McFeeters|Robert L|RL|']
D000935:Antifungal Agents D001234:Aspergillus niger D000077558:Big Data D002176:Candida albicans D003455:Cryptococcus neoformans D057225:Data Mining D055808:Drug Discovery D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests D009822:Oils, Volatile D064209:Phytochemicals
essential oil antifungal Aspergillus niger Candida albicans Cryptococcus neoformans minimum inhibitory concentration bioactivity drug discovery exclusionary principle natural product phytochemicals