1-20: Screening of oleaginous fungal strains from soybean plants

Monday, May 2, 2011
Grand Ballroom C-D, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
Yan Mi and Bo Hu, Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN

The accumulation of bio-lipids has received tremendous attentions recently, especially on microalgae, due to its high content of oil cultured in certain stressed conditions. Besides microalgae, filamentous fungi can be excellent lipid producers too. Filamentous fungi can grow in the form of pellets and can grow on solid substrates such as lignocelluloses with very limited moisture levels, both much easier to harvest than individual microalgae or yeast cells. Filamentous fungi can synthesize hydrolysis enzymes that enable them to directly utilize lignocellulosic substrates. Current available oleaginous fungal strains were primarily selected from Mother Nature to produce poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). Their capacity to accumulate total lipid is very limited and the lipid profile is not well suitable for biodiesel production. Efforts on strain development have to be revisited for a better species on lipid accumulation and hydrolysis enzyme production. We screened endophtic fungi from oil-bearing crops, such as soybean and peanut. These endogenetic fungi, exposed under high oil circumstance, might be excellent candidates to accumulate the microbial lipids. Comprehensive screening from soybean plants gave us three isolates with high lipid content (as high as 35% of their dry cell biomass) under regular PD broth medium. Their lipid production undoubtedly can be increased under optimized and stressed growth condition. The major components of lipid are hexadecane and octadecane, consisting more than 60% of the total lipid. These isolates, as long as identified and optimized, are promising microorganisms for future biofuel conversion.

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