Biochemical characterization of cultivated Cordyceps bassiana mycelia and fruiting bodies by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

In this study, nuclear magnetic resonance techniques coupled with multivariate data analysis were used for the metabolic profiling of mycelia and fruiting bodies of the entomopathogenic fungi, Cordyceps bassiana according to developmental stages. A direct extraction method using two deuterated solvents of D₂O and CDCl₃ was used to investigate the relative levels of identified metabolites in each extraction condition in the mycelium and fruiting body formation stages. There was a clear separation among mycelia and fruiting bodies with various developmental stages in partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) derived score plots. During the transition from mycelia to fruiting bodies, the major metabolic change observed was the conversion of glucose to mannitol, and beauvericin to phenylalanine and 1-hydroxyisovaleric acid. In the developmental stages of fruiting bodies studied, there was a clear separation between stage 3 and the other stages in PLS-DA derived score plots. Nineteen compounds including 13 amino acids, 2 nucleosides, 3 organic acids, and glucose showed the highest levels in stage 3 fruiting bodies. The flavonoid content in the fruiting bodies showed similar levels during stages 1, 2, and 3, whereas the level at stage 4 was significantly decreased compared to the other stages. Results suggest that the fruiting body of C. bassiana is richer in natural resources at stage 3 compared to the other fruiting body stages due to its high abundance of compounds including total flavonoids. The metabolome information acquired in this study can be useful criteria for the quality control of commercial use of C. bassiana.