Production of Lipid and Fatty Acids during Growth of Aspergillus terreus on Hydrocarbon Substrates Adepu Kiran Kumar & Preety Vatsyayan & Pranab Goswami Received: 1 January 2009 / Accepted: 7 May 2009 / Published online: 9 June 2009 # Humana Press 2009 Abstract An Aspergillus terreus, isolated from oil contaminated soil, could degrade a wide range of petroleum hydrocarbons including the immediate oxidation products of hydro- carbons, like alkanols and alkanals. Among all the linear chain carbon substrates, highest growth of 39.1±3.8 g l -1 (wet weight) was observed when n-hexadecane was used as the sole source of carbon. The growth of the fungus on this highly hydrophobic substrate was associated with the morphological change of the hyphae and increase production of lipid in the cells. The lipid production in the hydrocarbon (n-hexadecane) grown cells was sevenfold higher than the corresponding glucose grown cells. The fatty acid profile of the lipid content formed in the hydrocarbon grown cells was significantly different from the glucose grown cells and was composed of fatty acids with chain length C 14 to C 33 as revealed from the liquid chromatography electrospray ionization mass spectrometry analyses. Among the ranges, the fatty acids with chain lengths C 14 to C 18 were predominant in the profile. Considering the fatty acid profile and the high level of lipid production, this A. terreus mediated production of lipid is envisaged to have potential application in the oleochemical industries including the production of biodiesel. Keywords Filamentous fungi . Aspergillus terreus . Lipid . Fatty acid . Hydrocarbon Introduction The microbial degradation of petroleum hydrocarbon is an area that has been continuously stimulating interest of researchers since last several decades due to their scope for wide applications, such as bioremediation [1–3], production of secondary metabolites [4, 5], enzymes [6–8], biotransformation [9], etc. The importance of fungal degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons is growingly recognized and attracts attention due to the widespread and abundance of fungi in terrestrial ecosystem [10, 11]. Among the various fungi, Aspergillus species has been identified as one of the potential microbial agents for Appl Biochem Biotechnol (2010) 160:1293–1300 DOI 10.1007/s12010-009-8669-x A. K. Kumar : P. Vatsyayan : P. Goswami (*) Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781039 Assam, India e-mail: pgoswami@iitg.ernet.in