Production of Lovastatin from Fungal Culture ...

Production of Lovastatin from Fungal Culture by using Fed-batch Fermentation Process

Author Name : Ravi Vital Kandisa

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56025/IJARESM.2024.121024330

ABSTRACT Lovastatin is secondary metabolite produced from Aspergillus terries (A. terries) lovastatin is a cholesterollowering agent under the group of drugs characterized as a statin. Lovastatin is an inactive lactone which is hydrolysed to the corresponding beta-hydroxyacid form. Lovastatin serves as an inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3- methylglutaryl- coenzyme A (HMG-COA) reductase. HMG-COA is a catalyst for the conversion of HMG-COA to mevalonate, an important rate-limiting process for the cholesterol biosynthesis. This drug produced by fermentation process by using Aspergillus terries. At time of fermentation many factors influence production of secondary metabolites by using A. terries these are nutritional factors like carbon and nitrogen source and environmental factors like pH, dissolved oxygen, agitation, temperature and other. Temperature is an important parameter for the growth of microorganism. A simple temperature-shift method (28-23oC) was proved surprisingly valuable to the fermentation process. Hence it was found that lovastatin production by A. terries favoured sub-optimal growth conditions.