松萝酸活性作用机理及其物种资源研究概况

Review on bioactivity mechanism and species resources of usnic acid

Usnic acid is one of the most widely distributed and the most abundant compounds in lichens, and is rather well known as the antibiotic in the early stage. Due to its availability and easily isolated from many lichen species, many aspects of biological activity have been discovered. In the past 20 years, research reports on the active mechanism of usnic acid in antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer and other aspects have been keeping up with new breakthroughs. Research revealed usnic acid had antibacterial and antiviral effects by inhibiting biofilm formation of bacteria and synthesis of RNA and DNA, and usnic acid could kill tumor cells by inducing programmed apoptosis and inhibiting synthesis of DNA of tumor cells. Furthermore, usnic acid had an ability of inhibiting tumor cell migration. But usnic acid as nutritional supplements for weight loss was found to trigger mitochondrial dysfunction in liver cells that results in liver damage, which has been paid more and more attention in the scientific community. In order to grasp the domestic and external research trends of usnic acid resources development, this paper focuses on a comprehensive analysis on antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer action mechanism and liver toxicity researches of usnic acid around the last two decades. To date, lots of lichen species subordinate to about 35 genera have been found to contain more or less usnic acid, most of these species with usnic acid are fruticose lichens, followed by folicose lichens, only very rare cruticose liches are found to contain usnic acid. Research reports on genera and species resources rich in usnic acid have been sorted out comprehensively, and environmental factors affecting the content of usnic acid have been also summarized in detail in order to provide a theoretical basis for the discovery of potential resources rich in usnic acid and for solving the raw material problem needed for further study of activity.