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Rapid Screening and Isolation of a Fungus for Sitosterol to Androstenedione Biotransformation

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Abstract

Androstenedione (AD) is a steroid intermediate used in the pharmaceutical industry for the production of several important anabolic drugs. An important route for producing AD is by the microbial transformation of sterols. Microbes capable of efficiently transforming sterols to AD are few and newer strains need to be isolated. Conventional procedures for screening and isolation are time consuming. A new procedure was used for screening and isolation of fungal microorganisms capable of biotransformation of sitosterol to androstenedione. In this procedure, Basic Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) and Position-Specific Iterative BLAST were employed to obtain a parent set of candidate microorganisms. The parent set was reduced using heuristics and constraints to obtain a manageable number of microorganisms that may be tested experimentally. For this work, screening of the entire NCBI database yielded a parent set containing 64 microorganisms. Among these, only two microorganisms, Aspergillus oryzae and Aspergillus nidulans FGSC A4, qualified to the experimental stage. Sitosterol biotransformation experiments were carried out using A. oryzae and the production of AD in culture medium was confirmed.

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Acknowledgement

Authors would like to acknowledge Shruti Mishra and Sashank Shivhare for their considerable help during this work. Financial supports from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India in the form of Senior Research Fellowship is gratefully acknowledged by one of the authors, Alok Malaviya.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, 110016, India

    Alok Malaviya & James Gomes

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  1. Alok Malaviya
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  2. James Gomes
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Correspondence to James Gomes.

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Malaviya, A., Gomes, J. Rapid Screening and Isolation of a Fungus for Sitosterol to Androstenedione Biotransformation. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 158, 374–386 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-008-8416-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-008-8416-8

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