Carbon utilization profile of a thermophilic fungus, Thermomyces lanuginosus using phenotypic microarray

Abstract

The thermophilic filamentous fungus, Thermomyces lanuginosus produces the largest amount of xylanase reported. In addition to this, it expresses large amount of other enzymes that have been used indus- trially or have academic interest. Thus, this fungus has a potential to be applied for biomass conversion to produce biofuel or other applications. In this study, the Biolog system was used to characterize the utilisa- tion and growth of T. lanuginosus on 95 carbon sources. The carbohydrates based compounds, both single sugars and oligosaccharide, showed the best utilisation profile, with the pentose sugar xylose in- ducing the highest growth, followed by trehelose, raf- finose, D-mannose turanose fructose and glucose. Among oligosaccharides, sucrose had the highest my- celium formation followed by stachyose, maltose, maltotriose, glycogen and dextrin. Interestingly the fungus also grew well on cellobiose suggesting that this fungus can produce cellulose hydrolysing pro- teins. D-alanine was the best amino acid to promote fungal growth while the effect of other amino acids tested was similar to the control. These results dem- onstrate the ability of this fungus to grow relatively well on most plant based compounds thus making this fungus a possible candidate for plant biomass conver- sion which can be applied to a number of biotechno- logical applications including biofuel production.