Abstract
In order to screen new tyrosinase inhibiting principle which is expected to be a new biofunctional skin whitening cosmetics, we have isolated 600 strains of the marine- derived fungi and investigated tyrosinase inhibiting activity for their acetone extracts. The significant activities (>70% Inhibition) were observed in the extract of 10 strains of fungi (MFA7, MFA27, MFA58, MFA317, MFA318, MFA345, MFA412, MFA552, MFA562, MFA581). These active strains were cultured in SWS medium with 1 L scale and the resulting broth and mycelium were extracted to afford mycelium extract (000M) and broth extract (000B), respectively. Tyrosinase inhibiting activity for all extracts has been tested. As the results, the broth extracts of 4 strains (27B, 58B, 552B and 581B) exhibited relatively high levels of activity of $IC_{50}$ values of $3.0-19.0\;{\mu}g/mL$. The active component of 581B was purified by assay-guided isolation to yield the known kojic acid (1), and its structure was determined by physicochemical evidence. Kojic acid showed the significant tyrosinase inhibitory activity with $IC_{50}$ values of $12.0\;{\mu}M$.
