TERM PAPER

MICROBIAL PHYSIOLOGY AND METABOLISM

Course Code – BTY538

Submitted by –
SHASHI SHARMA

Roll no. – RP8003B15

Reg. no. - 11006142
INDEX

 INTRODUCTION

 INDUSTRIAL IMPORTANCE

 USES

 DRAWBACKS

 RESEARCH PAPERS

 RECENT RESEARCH

 FUTURE

 REFERENCES
PENICILIUM CHRYSOGENUM

INTRODUCTION

 Penicilliumchrysogenum is a mold that is widely distributed in nature, and is

found living on foods and in the environments.

 It was previously known as Penicilliumnotatum. It has rarely been reported as

a cause of human disease.

 It is the source of several β-lactam antibiotics, most significantly penicillin.

 It is active against many gram positive bacteria like actinomyces .

 P. chrysogenum reproduces by forming dry chains of spores (or conidia) from

brush-shaped conidiophores. The conidia are typically carried by air currents
to new colonisation sites.
 In P. chrysogenum the conidia are blue to blue-green, and the mold sometimes
exudes a yellow pigment.
 The airborne spores of P. chrysogenum are important human allergens.
Vacuolar and alkaline serine proteases have been implicated as the major
allergenic proteins.

 Penicillium species tend to have small hyphae. This makes protoplasmic

movement difficult to detect..Penicillium spores have a hydrophobic surface. ,
they are capable of being wetted; this is necessary for germination to occur.

 Penicillium produces asexually, and are unable to sporulate when submerged.

However, they begin reproduction easily when hyphae emerge into a gas
phase.

 Alexander Fleming accidently leaving a culture dish of Staphylococcus

aureusbacteria uncovered for a number of days. When returning to the
bacteria, Fleming noticed mold had begun to grow as well. He incorrectly
 names named the fungus Penicilliumrubra.Later it was re-named by Charles
Thom as Penicilliumnotatum which was found to be the same species as
Penicilliumchrysogenum.

 Penicillium species are heterotrophic. The pathogenic species feed off of the
fruit they destroy.

 Penicillin works on gram-positive bacteria.These bacteria contain a cell wall

made of peptidoglycan, and it is this cell wall which penicillin reacts with to
weaken the bacteria and ultimately destroy it.

INDUSTERIAL IMP0RTANCE
 P. chrysogenum has been used industrially to produce penicillin and
xanthocillin X, to treat pulp mill waste, and to produce the enzymes
polyamine oxidase, phospho-gluconate dehydrogenase, and glucose oxidase.

 Penicillium are a osmotolerant, meaning that they grow better with high water
levels, they are ble to tolerate low water potential.

 Penicilliumchrysogenum is usually exploited for its antibiotic capabilities. It

produces the hydrophobic β-lactam compound penicillin. The efficacy of the
specific penicillin made is dependent on its side chain .

 Penicilliumchrysogenum was limited to the treatment of scarlet fever,

pneumonia, gonorrhea, infection of wounds, and serious staphylococcal
infections with Penicillian G.
  Today many variations of side chains yield a wide variety of semi-synthetic
penicillins that are able to fight a broader range of bacteria; however,
Penicilliumchrysogenum remains the primary producer of Penicilian G and
Penicilian V.

 In industrial fermentations, Penicilliumchrysogenum uses sulfate as the source

of sulfur for the biosynthesis of penicillin.

 Penicilliumchrysogenum is a widely studied species of Penicillium and is

sometimes known as or P. notatum, P. meleagrinu , P. cyaneofulvum.

 It plays a significant role in the medical community as an antibiotic because it

can create penicillin which inhibits the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walls
affecting lysis of the cell.

 It can also play a role as either a pathogen attacks.

 The importance of sequencing the genome of Penicilliumchrysogenum is

evident; it is a major player in the lives of humans today in various forms;
pathogen, allergen, and, most importantly, as an industrial source of
antibiotics.

 Therefore understanding the various metabolic and biosynthetic systems of

Penicilliumchrysogenum will allow researchers the ability to limit growth
when it acts as a pathogen, lower the allergic response to it when it acts as an
allergen, or maximize biosynthesis of penicillin when it is used to make the
antibiotic.

 it is important to have the genome sequence of this species for analysis when
considering the emergence of new drug resistant strains of bacteria.

 The mycelial cake of Penicilliumchrysogenum, when dried and specially

processed, has been found to serve as a source of protein in place of soybean
meal in the diet of experimental mice.

USES

 Animals were fed a control diet first, and an increase in weight proved the
formulation to be satisfactory. The changeover from the control to the
 experimental diet was sudden, and initially caused a decrease in the weight of
the experimental mice.

 However, at the end of a 29-day period, the experimental mice showed

increases in weight comparable to those of the control animals.

 This supports the view that dried mycelium can be substituted as a protein
source for soybean meal, provided it is made more palatable and less
disagreeable in odor.

 Penicilliumchrysogenum strain ATCC 9480 was used as a sourceof PcV

 Penicillin was the prime candidate for an antibacterial antibiotic for the
following reasons:

• Penicillin kills gram-positive bacteria very well. On the plate to the left, P.
chrysogenum was inoculated into the center of a lawn of Staphylococcus
aureus. the clear zone of inhibition of growth of S. aureus.

• Penicillin causes no ill effects in humans and other animals, except for
allergies in about 10% of humans. penicillin allergies are usually caused by
its binding to serum proteins, causing an IgE-mediated inflammation.

RESEARCH PAPERS

Cloning and sequencing of ATP sulfurylase from Penicilliumchrysogenum.

Identification of a likely allosteric domain.

 Section of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis

95616.
 Fungal (Penicilliumchrysogenum) and yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) ATP
sulfurylases were shown to have very similar kinetic and chemical properties

 The properties of Penicilliumchrysogenum adenosine 5'-phosphosulfate (APS)

kinase mutated at Ser-107 were examined. Ser-107 is analogous to a serine of
the E. coli enzyme that has been shown to serve as an intermediate acceptor in
the transfer of a phosphoryl group from ATP to APS.
Tom Volk's Fungus

 Penicilliumchrysogenum (also known as Penicilliumnotatum) is the source for

penicillin, the first antibiotic.
 Penicillin works against gram-positive bacteria, such as Staphylococcus and
Pneumococcus by disrupting bacterial cell wall synthesis-- crosslinking of the
peptidoglycan polymers is prevented by inhibition of the enzyme
transpeptidaase, causing the malformed cells walls to take on

DRAWBACKS

 Penicillin was unstable, especially at low and high pH.

 Penicillin was produced in small quantities by even the most prolific cultures.
 Penicillium grows well only in surface culture.
 Waste from pencillin production provide high BODand can present serious
problem in their disposal as well as expence to the industry.

CURRENT RESEARCH
The search for a complete understanding of the biosynthetic pathways for the
production of penicillin in Penicilliumchrysogenum is still an active area of research.

 It is important to understand how these pathways function to maximize the

industrial processes for creating penicillin.

 Currently there is no understanding as to how exactly iso-penicillin N (IPN)

makes it into peroxisomes. It has been found that other species that secrete
IPN have ABC coupled transport as in the case of Aspergillusnidulans. No
such transporters exist in Penicilliumchrysogenum.

 Penicillium Antifungal Protein (PAF) is a protein which inhibits the growth of

certain taxonomically related filamentous fungi.

 PAF may also affect the permeability of the membranes of filamentous fungi
by catalyzing the leaking of potassium out of the cells. Not all fungi are
affected by it and the exact mechanism of action of PAF on cells is unknown.

 Amylases have been some of the most important enzymes in the eyes of
humans for thousands of years. They are a required work horse in the
processes of alcoholic fermentation.

 Because of their importance, they have been subject to industrial production.

Therefore new cost effective ways for producing amylases are studied.

 One way to produce α-amylase (one of two types of amylases) is by Solid

State Fermentation (SSF) which is a process that exposes an insoluble
substrate to moisture but not standing water for fermentation.

 Cheap agricultural by-products such as wheat bran and sunflower oil meal in
combination have been fermented with Penicilliumchrysogenum which
produces α-amylase. This is a low cost way to produce the product; however,
large scale experiments are needed to ensure industrial application.

 Some Penicillium species actually help prevent fungal decay as opposed to

producing it. Penicilliumchrysogenum produces glucose oxidase, which is
used as a preservative in fruit juices.

 One of the things Penicillium is most famous for is the drug penicillin. It was
used to create the first antibiotic.
  The present study describes the isolation and identification of native isolates
of Penicilliumchrysogenum.
 Several fungalisolates obtained from different samples comprising of fruits,
vegetables, bread and grains from market around Faisalabadwere identified as
Penicilliumspecies by their morphological features.
 Slide culture method was adopted for the identificationof fungal isolates. Only
two isolates, one from spoiled mango and other from maize were found
closely related to Penicilliumchrysogenum.
 Most of the cultural characteristics of Penicilliumchrysogenum isolates were
observed on Sabouraud's glucose

THE FUTURE OF PENCILLIN

 The effects of penicillin are not as great as they once were. This is due to a
number of factors which are all summed up in penicillin resistance. In other
words, the bacteria are becoming immune to the effects of penicillin.
 This is brought on by many things which all are linked back to good ol’
Charles Darwin and his theory on selection of the fittest.
 When patients are given penicillin antibiotics and stop taking the medication
after “feeling better”, there are some bacteria which survive the initial dosage
and live on to reproduce other bacteria with the same traits.
 Other people feel that penicillin is too readily prescribed, and this allows for
more bacteria to become immune to it.Because of the bacterial resistance,
scientists are continually looking for new sources for antibiotics as well as
changing the old chemical structures.
REFERENCES

BOOKS

• INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY BY CASIDA

• MICROBIOLOGY BY PELCHZAR

• PRINCIPLES OF MICROBILOGY BY PRESCOTT

SITES

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillium_chrysogenum

• bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2008/kitzmann_step/

• www.britannica.com/EBchecked/.../Penicillium-chrysogenum
• mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/123/2/281.pdf

• www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Appl Microbiol › v.13(2); Mar 1965

• en.scientificcommons.org/19329599 - United States

• pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bi00514a002