Abstract
Lovastatin is a well-known natural statin, which is used for lowering plasma cholesterol levels by inhibiting 3-hydroxy-3-methyl glutaryl coenzyme A reductase. Different strains of Aspergillus and Monascus sp. have been exploited for statin production but Monascus sanguineus is still unexplored. In this study, lovastatin production from Monascus sanguineus under solid state fermentation was optimized using response surface methodology. The optimized value of the lovastatin yield was 20.04 mg/gds with soybean concentration of 20 g/L, CaCl2 concentration of 2.5 g/L, acetic acid concentration of 25 μL and inoculum size of 3.4 mL. This study also documented spectrometric characterization and fragment pattern of lovastatin with the help of Fourier transfer infrared spectrometry and mass spectrometry. Citrinin was not detected in any of the samples used for this study.