Fungal Lipids

Abstract

For many years there has been considerable concern over the nutritional problems accompanying the rapid growth of the world population. The need to find sources of fat and protein to supplement agricultural production has developed with this concern, and microbial sources of these essential nutrients have been explored. Many microorganisms, particularly fungi, have been screened for their potential to accumulate relatively large quantities of fat. Under appropriate conditions, there are several fungi that accumulate high (>20%) amounts of fat (oleaginous fungi). We have gained considerable knowledge from these studies about the environmental and nutritional conditions that influence fat production. Woodbine (1959) has comprehensively reviewed these studies, many of which were conducted in the 1940,s and 1950,s. Similar studies have been reported since, but they have added little more to our understanding of the relationships between environmental and nutrient conditions and fat production. The most important recent advances have been in the development of continuous culture techniques and methods for inducing synchronous division of yeast cells in culture. The application of these techniques in studying lipid production and metabolism in fungi is limited. Most of the early studies on fat production have been conducted using batch culture techniques.