Collectionof plant material: As part of an effort to identify endophytic fungi that produce deoxypodophyllotoxin and/or its analogues, Juniperus plant species were collected from the natural populations at the northwestern Himalayan environments (Jammu and Kashmir, India) and the botanical gardens of Rombergpark (Dortmund, Germany). A few twigs were carefully excised from the host plant and collected in clean dry plastic bags. The twigs were transported to the Institut fur Umweltforschung (INFU), Technische Universitat Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany immediately, and processed within 4 h of collection. The twigs were washed thoroughly in running tap water followed by deionized (DI) water to remove any dirt sticking to them and stored at 4 ℃ until the isolation procedure of endophytic fungi was commenced. The endophyte was cultured in Sabouraud broth (SB; Difco, Cat. No. 238230) consisting of dextrose (2%) as the sole carbon source and enzymatic digest of casein (1%) as the sole nitrogen source. A set of 10 conical flasks of 500 ml capacity was used, each with four indentations and containing 100 ml SB, adjusted to pH 5.6 before autoclaving. The fungus was inoculated into each flask from the parent axenic culture. These flasks were incubated at 28 ℃ with shaking (200 rev/min) on a rotary shaker (Heidolph UNIMAX 2010, Germany). Each flask represented one time point of fermentation termination followed by extraction and analysis for determination of deoxypodophyllotoxin production. The first sample was taken after 2 h of inoculation (0 h) and subsequently the other samples were taken after every 24 h, up to 216 h. Three replicates of each experiment set was undertaken to get reproducible data.