The genus Penicillium is ubiquitous and its species are commonly recovered from every kind of substrate and environmental conditions. Therefore, not surprisingly, Penicillium strains are commonly reported in investigations dealing with fungal endophytic assemblages of plants in both natural and anthropic contexts. As such they are implicated in more or less effective relationships with the host...

Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a medium without supplement of ergosterol. We now have isolated a new sterol from a culture broth of a Penicillium and found that this new sterol, named paxisterol, has analgesic activity in the mouse AcOH writhing assay1}. In contrast to corticosteroid, paxisterol does not have antiinflammatory activity. These results suggest that paxisterol is a new class of analge...

Acyl-coenzyme A: cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT) catalyzes cholesterol esterification and plays an important role in the intestinal absorption of cholesterol, hepatic production of lipoproteins, and accumulation of cholesteryl ester within cells. During the course of screening to find ACAT inhibitors from microbial sources, the present authors isolated pyripyropene A from Penicillium griseof...

The taxonomy of the important mycotoxigenic species Penicillium viridicatum and P. verrucosum was reviewed to clarify disagreements relating to the three P. viridicatum groups erected by Ciegler and coworkers (A. Ciegler, D. I. Fennell, G. A. Sansing, R. W. Detroy, and G. A. Bennett, Appl. Microbiol. 26:271-278, 1973) and the mycotoxins produced by them. Cultures derived from the types of these...

Fungal infection of bone by Penicillium marneffei is rare. We report on a case of Penicillium marneffei infection in a Filipino woman, which involved multiple soft-tissue abscesses and infection of the axial skeleton. Early diagnosis and treatment of this potentially reversible disease is emphasised. Such an approach is essential to prevent bony destruction from becoming too advanced and, more ...

A new isolate from medicinal plant endophytes was identified as Penicillium sp. (HKUCC 8070). A water-soluble red pigment was produced by this strain in potato-dextrose broth, maltextract broth and a chemically defined medium containing glutamate as a nitrogen source. The red pigment produced was identified as heat-stable, polyketide Monascus red pigment. The highest yield of the red pigment wa...

Since the aflatoxins were first reported in 1961 from Aspergillus flavus, mycotoxins have often been named after the fungus which was first found to produce them. A long list of connections between fungal species and mycotoxins and antibiotics has been reported, but unfortunately many of the identifications, and hence the connection between mycotoxin name and the source of the toxin, are incorr...

The mould Penicillium frequentans Westling is, as its name implies, of very common occurrence on all kinds of material. According to Raper & Thom (1949), the Monoverticillate section of the genus Penicillium includes a P. frequentans series of three species, namely the type species, P. sprnulosum Thom and a less common species, P. purpurrescens (Sopp) n.comb. Webmer's classical studies of citri...

Penicillium dipodomyis is thought to be an exclusively asexual fungus associated with Kangaroo Rats, Dipodomys species, and is unique among Penicillium species in growing at 37°C but producing no known toxins. Lack of recombination within P. dipodomyis would result in limited adaptive flexibility but possibly enhance local adaptation and host selection via maintenance of favourable genotypes. H...

The European Union (EU) has introduced statutory limits for patulin in fruit products. Species definitions need to be unambiguous for this capability, especially to determine 'weak spots' in food, drink and feed production. Fungi were analysed for the isoepoxydon dehydrogenase (IDH) gene of the patulin metabolic pathway to indicate potential patulin production. In several cases inhibition of PC...