It is believed that plant endophytes provide protection for
hosts by producing a variety of bioactive metabolites [40].
Many endophytic actinobacteria inhibit or kill a wide variety
of pathogenic microorganisms [41-43]. In the present study,
after multiple activity screening among the isolates, many
prominent candidates for further exploitation were identified.
Among them, 12 strains showed antimicrobial activity, with
strains A229, A243 and A281 showing acute and wide
antibacterial spectra (Table 2). 87.5% and 58.8% of the
isolates showed anticancer and anti-diabetic activities,
respectively, in which 10 strains displayed strong anticancer
activity and 5 strains displayed significant anti-diabetic activity
(Table 2). Among potential candidates with antimicrobial and
anticancer activities, Streptomyces was the dominant genus.
However, rare actinomycetes of good anti-diabetic activity
occupied a relatively high ratio (28.6%) than those of
anticancer (7.1%, Table 4). Several researches have shown that
endophytes can protect host plants by producing antimicrobial
compounds [4]. Some of these compounds possess antifungal,
antibacterial, and antimalarial activity, among other bioactivities,
especially for the endophytes from medicinal plants producing
useful antibiotics [4, 42]