Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Microbial oils have important applications in producing high value fuels and nutraceutical products. In recent years, microbial oil production by oleaginous filamentous fungi has attracted increasing interest because fungi have relatively high growth rates are able to use a variety of carbon sources and have relatively low harvesting cost compared to heterotrophic cultivation of microalgae. Many studies on microbial oil production by filamentous fungi have been focused on low-cost substrates such as lignocellulosic biomass. However, research on morphology control is limited, which is challenging in cultivation of filamentous fungi and critical towards process scale-up and commercialization. We have previously identified an oleaginous filamentous fungus Mucor plumbeus for microbial lipid production. Cultivations of this fungus at different conditions and scales have shown the variation in fungal morphological forms. Different inoculation and process control strategies have been proposed and preliminary tested in order to control the morphological forms of this fungus suitable for reactor cultivation and process scale-up.

Biography

Zhanying Zhang has obtained his PhD in 2008 from the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is currently a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He is an experienced Researcher in fermentation technology, bioprocess optimization and scale-up, biomass pretreatment and biorefinery. He has published more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 4 book chapters. He also has 3 patent applications in processing lignocellulosic biomass for the production of fermentable sugars.

Email: jan.zhang@qut.edu.au