Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Lovastatin , also known as Monacolin K, is a kind of fungal metabolites, serving as a competitive inhibitor of 3- hydroxyl- 3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG ?CoA), the rate limitng enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis. It can effectively reduce plasma cholesterol level in various mammalian species including human, thereby effective in the therapy of hypercholesterolemia. Nowadays , lovastatin and its semisynthetic derivatives are very important drugs since the mortality of heart disease becoming relatively high, in addition to this, lovastatin has a clear evidence to benefit on stroke and it also shows in vivo tumor suppression by inhibiting the synthesis of nonsterol isoprenoid compounds. C urrently, lovastatin is mainly produced by submerged fermentation. A few works are carried on solid state fermentation (SSF). Lovastatin is an intracellular product and mostly accumulated in mycelia. In submerged fermentation , its yield is proportional to amount of biomass, with the high cell density causing the increase of the fermentation broth viscosity and the difficulty of stirring and oxygen mass transfer, an alternative strategy to produce lovastatin is by SSF. It offers a good environment for fungi to grow, therefore high mycelail density and high lovastatin production. It provides an opportunity to exploit agro-industrial residues for the production of value added products. I n the present study , production of lovastatin is carried out by Aspergillus fischeri NCIM 509 using six agroindustrial wastes as substrates like wheat husk, rice husk, rice bran, corn husk, banana pseudo stem and rice straw under solid state fermentation. Of these substrates rice bran was found to be the most suitable substrate producing a lovastatin yield of 5.82 mg/g of solid substrate. Process parameters were optimized like incubation time (6 days), substrate particle size (300μm ), moisture content (140%v/w), inoculums concentration (70% v/w), temperature (320C), pH of the medium (6.0), carbon source (3%w/v starch) and nitrogen concentration (2% w/v sodium nitrate ) giving an overall yield of 9.11 mg/ g of substrate after optimization. The observation made in this study hold great promise for scale up production of lovastatin from Aspergillus fischeri NCIM 509 under solid state fermentation.

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