• KSBB Journal
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.229-236
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• 2011

An efficient screening method was developed for rapid selection of a few overproducers of itaconic acid (IA) among the great many mutants derived from mother strains of Aspergillus terreus. For this purpose, an attempt was made to reveal the relationships of the growth rate and sporulation of each mutant on PDA solid medium with its IA productivity in the final liquid production-culture. As a result, it was possible to classify the mutated strains into 5 groups (from [A] to [E] group) according to theirmorphologies (i.e., growth rate and sporulation extent) on the PDA slants. Notably, most of the high-yielding mutants of IA were observed to belong to [A]group which had the properties of the highest growth rate and sporulation among the 5 groups, whereas the mutant groups of [C], [D] and [E] with the contrasting morphological features showed significant reductions in their IA productivities. From these results, it was concluded that the probability of selecting IA overproducing mutants could be remarkably enhanced when the mutated colonies showing faster growth rates are firstly selected on the PDA plate, and then further screening process is performed on the basis of the sporulation extents of the mutants selected. Consequently, through the application of the strategy developed in this study, costs and time involvedin the labor-intensive task of strain improvement could be reduced to a great extent, because the time-consuming liquid culture processes did not need to performed for the unfavorable mutants belonging to the groups other than group [A].