Isolation and characterization of thermotolerant fungi producing lignoceric acid from glycerol.

In this paper, thermotolerant fungal strains which can grow on glycerol as the sole carbon source were isolated from soil samples. Morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses of ten isolated strains showed that all strains belong to Aspergillus fumigatus. Analysis of their cellular fatty acid composition revealed that all the strains accumulated lignoceric acid (C24:0), suggesting that the isolated strains can be used to produce this high-value long-chain fatty acid from glycerol.