In this study, perstractive fermentation of intracellular Monascus pigments in nonionic surfactant micelle aqueous solution had been studied. The permeability of cell membrane modified by nonionic surfactant might have influence on the rate of export of intracellular pigments into its extracellular broth while nearly no effect on the final extracellular pigment concentration. However, the solub...

Monacolins, as natural statins, form a class of fungal secondary metabolites and act as the specific inhibitors of HMG-CoA reductase. The interest in using the fermented products as the natural source of monacolins, instead of statin drugs, is increasing enormously with its increasing demand. In this study, the fermented products were produced by Monascus purpureus FTC5391 using submerged and s...

Amino acid derivatives of monascus pigments were produced by fermentation, and their antimicrobial activities were determined. Thirty-nine l- and d-forms of amino acids were added as a precursor to the fermentation medium for derivation of pigments. Derivatives with L-Phe, D-Phe, L-Tyr, and D-Tyr exhibited high activities against Gram(+) and Gram(-) bacteria with MIC values of c. 4-8 microg mL(...

Rice fermented with the mold Monascus purpureus, also known as the red yeast rice (RYR) used in traditional Chinese medicine, contains pharmacologically important monacolins. The prescription statin, lovastatin, is identical to monacolin K, and there is a suspicion of spiking RYR products with lovastatin. Profiling authentic and raw RYR samples has the potential to distinguish the spiked from n...

Monascus spp. namely Monascus sanguineus was isolated from pomegranate (Punica granatum). In this study, the isolated M. sanguineus was compared with M. purpureus MTCC410 procured from MTCC Chandigarh, India for optimising the red pigment yield. It was observed that both strains had produced maximum red pigment on the 16 day of incubation (21.9 CVU/ml for M. sanguineus & 16.9 CVU/ml for M. purp...

Fungi form the genus Monascus are a promising source for natural color additives. However, before effectively applying Monascus to foods, it is important to select strains which produce large amounts of biopigments but little or no citrinin, a mycotoxin usually also produced by these fungi. Also, color stability of these pigments should be properly investigated. In order to compare Monascus str...

Monascus species is an important traditional fermentation fungus used on food. Monacolin K (a secondary metabolite of Monascus, a competitive inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase) in inhibition of mevalonate synthesis may result in reductions of isoprenoid prenylation in cells. Impairment of protein isoprenoid prenylation has been related to anticancer effect in cancer c...