Preliminary Study on Diverse Carbon Utilization by Transformant Aspergillus niger

Abstract

Aspergillus niger have been widely recognized as producer of metabolites and reported as good expression hosts for homologous and heterologous proteins. For recombinant expression systems, nature of metabolite production would change when the expression host system is modified via plasmid development. In order to study the diversity of carbon utilization of transformant A.niger and their relation to specific carbon sources that could trigger mannanase production, a new screening system was introduced using Biolog technique to evaluate the growth of the transformant performed on 95 carbon sources. As a result, the transformed A.niger were found able to utilize dextrin and other 27 carbohydrates with majority preferred carbohydrates were identified as monosaccharide, oligosaccharides and some sugar alcohols as the best chosen carbon sources for growth. The relative simplicity and global carbon sources underlying in the biolog system for screening of carbon source make it as a useful tool for the preliminary screening and identification of carbon sources in order to select the best carbon source for medium development.