The filamentous fungus Monascus pilosus was genetically transformed with a reporter plasmid, pMS-1.5hp, by aurintricarboxylic acid (ATA) treatment to obtain an efficient red-pigment producing mutant. The transformation efficiency of Monascus pilosus was higher with the ATA-treatment than with either a non-restriction-enzyme-mediated integration (REMI) or a REMI method. This valid and convenient...

Monascorubrin and its derivatives are polyketides used as natural colorants for a wide range of food for more than one thousand years. Since the biosynthetic pathway for this ancient chemical compound is unknown and genome sequence unavailable for any Monascus species, monascorubrin production has relied on extraction from fungal cultures of Monascus species. In vitro synthesis and genetic mani...

BACKGROUND Monascus pigments are widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industries due to their safety to human health. Our previous study found that glucose concentration induced extracellular oxidoreduction potential (ORP) changes could influence extracellular water-soluble yellow pigment production by Monascus ruber CGMCC 10910 in submerged fermentation. In this study, H2O2 and dithiothr...

Pigments extracted from natural products are widely used for food coloration in Japan. An investigation concerning the photo-mutagenicity and photo-carcinogenicity of frequently used colorants in Japan was performed. Colorants examined were from Laccifer lacca (lac-color), Coccus cacti (cochineal-color), Carthamus tinctorius (carthamus yellow), Gardenia augusta (gardenia yellow and gardenia blu...

Panda B.P., Javed S., Ali M. (2009): Engineering rice based medium for production of lovastatin with Monascus species. Czech J. Food Sci., 27: 352–360. Angkak (red mold rice, red yeast rice, Chinese red rice), a traditional Chinese functional food is produced by solid-state fermentation of cooked non-glutinous rice with Monascus species. The secondary metabolite of Monascus species, monacolin K...

A new method for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of citrinin in Monascus by gas-chromatography-selected ion monitoring (SIM) mass spectrometry has been developed. GC separation of citrinin in Monascus extract was achieved without the need for chemical derivatization, and could be detected as a single peak when the SIM mode selected 5 prominent fragmentations (m/z of 220, 205, 177, 105...

OBJECTIVES Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection causes chronic liver disease and is a major public health problem worldwide. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of Monascus pigment derivatives, which were derived from a microbial secondary metabolite synthesized from polyketides by Monascus spp., as HCV antiviral agents. METHODS We performed an in vitro RNA-dependent RNA polymera...

Monascus has been used to produce natural colorants and food supplements for more than one thousand years, and approximately more than one billion people eat Monascus-fermented products during their daily life. In this study, using next-generation sequencing and optical mapping approaches, a 24.1-Mb complete genome of an industrial strain, Monascus purpureus YY-1, was obtained. This genome cons...

ostriches are susceptible to bacterial, fungal and parasitic diseases. one of the most commonstrategies to reduce microbial contamination in animal production systems is to identify microbesources. in this regard, a first critical component for comprehensive farm-to-fork strategies to reducethe burden of foodborne illness is the identification of the pathogenic fungi in foodstuffs with animalso...