The influence of culturing environments on lovastatin production by Aspergillus terreus in submerged cultures

A simple temperature-shift method (28-23 °C) was proved surprisingly valuable to the fermentation process. Such experiments showed that the maximum of lovastatin production was further enhanced by 25% (572 mg/l at day 10) in comparison with that when the fungus was cultured at 28 °C. The timing to initiate the temperature-shift (96 h) corresponded to that of pellet formation and the subsequent core compactness. Hence, it was found that lovastatin production by A. terreus favored sub-optimal growth conditions.