Abstract
The influence of cultural conditions, especially C/N ratio of medium, growth temperature, nitrogen source and chain length of hydrocarbons on the amounts of lipids formed from n-paraffin in the my-celium of two strains (IFO 7824 and 7884) of Mortierella isabellina which were found to accumulate large amount of lipids in the mycelium incubated by using glucose as a carbon source was investigated.The mycelium of the strains were observed to be grown well when cultured by using decane as a carbon source. The maximum accumulation of lipids, 0.375g/400 ml medium, containing 5.0ml (3.64 g) of decane at C/N ratio of 24.1 by using NH4NO3 as a nitrogen source when grown at 30°C. In this case, the lipid coefficient which total intracellular lipid weight produced/100 g of decane was obtained 10.3.The fatty acids compositions of neutral and polar lipid fractions fractionated from lipid extracts by silicic acid column chromatography and the lipid compositions of both fractions were determined. The influence of the cultural conditions on these compositions was also investigated.
