Global J Res. Med. Plants & Indigen. Med. | Volume 2, Issue 9 | September 2013 | 642–647
INTRODUCTION: Generally fungi are filamentous multicellular achlorophyllus organism grown by tacking nutrients through absorption from dead and living cells. They multiply on surface or submerge condition during fermentation process and produce their metabolites intracellularly as well as extracellularly which are harvested, purified and used as supplements. Similar proteins are produced by A. niger extracellularly and quantitatively estimated by Lowry method (Lowry et al., 1951). Metz and Kossen (1977) reported that many parameters influence fungal pellet formation including inoculum level, initial pH of medium, agitation, medium composition and use of polymer additives or surface-active agents. Nielsen and Carlsen (1996), Jimenez-Tobon et al. (1997) studied fungal growth and reported that filamentous growth of fungi observed at high initial spore levels whereas increased pellets size were usually formed with reduced inoculum level. Fungi have been used in a variety of industries e.g. food, chemical, detergent, textiles and paper industries for production of protein, enzyme and other products (Moreira et al., 1999 & 2001; Kathiresan and Manivannan, 2006). Filamentous fungi have been widely used in the fermentation industry as it becomes a principal source of protein, enzymes and other metabolites. Therefore, fungi have been widely investigated by various researchers due to low cost and high productivity which attracted many other researchers to improve fungal strains by molecular techniques and also bioprocess (Finkelstein and Ball, 1992; Banerjee et al., 2003). Whitaker & Long (1973) and Wainwright et al. (1993) reported that the initial pH of medium plays an important role in fungal morphology as the higher pH values (5.0 to 6.0) produce pellets while low pH values (2.0 to 3.0) leads to filamentous mycelium growth,
meant the surface properties of the spores are influenced by pH. Proteins are nitrogen or amino acid supplements and most of the enzymes are made of proteins. Besides energy source, protein required for fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes and other unicellular and multicellular cells for their membrane and enzyme synthesis. Protein present in cells as lipoprotein, glycoprotein and other forms. Therefore, proteins are produced by fermentation technology and used in a lot of industries such chemical, detergent and food as nutrient supplements for human diet (Moreira et al., 2001). The objectives of our study to isolate fungal strain from soil for protein production in laboratory via small scale fermentation technology using two different types culture. Fungal isolate was inoculated in both production media and incubated for various incubation times at 30ºC. Total protein was harvested by filtration method and quantitatively estimated by spectrophotometer using Lowry reagents. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Isolation, Purification & Identification of fungi: Soil samples were collected from Botanical garden of Govt. RGPG College, Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, India. All soil samples were mixed together then formed one composite sample. Isolation of fungi was done by serial dilution technique. 0.1 ml sample was transferred from 10-3 dilution to sterilized Petri plates and poured melted Potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium then solidified at room temperature. All plates were incubated at 30ºC for 5 days and purified by streak plate method. After purification, fungal cultures were observed on the basis of morphological structures by microscopic method (Fig.-1) and identified using laboratory manual of filamentous soil fungi (Gilman, 1944 and Smith et al., 1983). Identified cultures were transferred to PDA slant and incubated at 30ºC for 5 days then stored in refrigerator for further experiments.
Global Journal of Research on Medicinal Plants & Indigenous Medicine || GJRMI ||