Shivani Gupta
BITS Pilani, India
Title: Bio prospecting of marine sources for production of HMG Co-A Reductase Inhibitors
Biography
Biography: Shivani Gupta
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases (one of the most common consequence of high cholesterol levels) are the most prevalent cause of death and disability in both developed as well as developing countries. The World Health Organization estimates that almost 20% of all strokes and over 50% of all heart attacks can be linked to high cholesterol. This necessitates the invention of new drugs or novel sources/production strategies of existing drugs to manage the increasing incidence of higher cholesterol. Fungi are extremely useful organisms in biotechnology industry as they are capable of constructing unique complex molecules using established metabolic pathways. Metabolites formed along these metabolic pathways are often found to be biologically active. Lovastatin is a fungal metabolite, an HMGR inhibitor, is used as effective drug for treatment of atherosclerosis and heart diseases. Finding novel source/s with potential to synthesize HMGR inhibitors represents an important milestone in biocatalysis of statin or their analogs. The soil dwelling terrestrial fungi like A. terreus and M. ruber are presently used to produce this hypocholesterolemic drug at commercial scale. Based on astounding hypocholesterolemic ability and a myriad of other therapeutic properties of statins, enhanced attention is warranted to identify new potential producers. During the course of this study we screened and identified a novel marine fungus that produces lovastatin. This is the first report of a marine fungus, other than A. terreus, which produces statin/s. Production of Lovastatin was estimated by yeast inhibition bioassay and confirmed by TLC, UV spectra analysis and HPLC methods. The statin produced was also found to inhibit human HMGR cloned in yeast as tested by RT-PCR.