Extracellular Amylase from the Thermophilic Fungus Thermomyces Lanuginosus

Abstract

The thermophilic fungus Thermomyces lanuginosus formerly named Humicola lanuginosa (Domsch et al., 1980) appears to be an excellent test organism for the study of extracellular amylase from a thermophilic fungus (Barnett and Fergus, 1971). Basaveswara Rao et al. (1979) have identified a glucoamylase in the growth medium containing starch from static cultures as well as shake flask cultures. The yield of activity was found to be 2.5 fold greater in shake cultures than in static cultures. Adams (1981) related amylase production to mycelial growth in static cultures and proposed that a mycelial bound amylase could account for the rapid disappearance of starch from the medium and that the extracellular amylase might in large part be due to autolysis. In this paper the relation between growth, enzyme production and substrate utilization was studied in a stirred laboratory fermenter with three different carbon sources.