In order to evaluate the effects of different pretreatments on microbial transformation of saponins in Dioscorea zingiberensis (DZW), various methods have been systematically studied on a large scale. Five pretreatments, including physical separation, catalytic solvent extraction, ultrasonic fermentation, complex enzymatic hydrolyzation and enzymatic saccharification, were performed on DZW. Com...

BACKGROUND Artemisinin (1) and its derivatives are now being widely used as antimalarial drugs, and they also exhibited good antitumor activities. So there has been much interest in the structural modification of artemisinin and its derivatives because of their effective bioactivities. The microbial transformation is a promising route to obtain artemisinin derivatives. The present study focuses...

This article revises the current state of microbial transformation use in natural products. It represents the results of the most recent reports. Due to the importance of this transformation, there is still a strong need to intensify the direction of microbial transformation of the natural product compounds, besides exploiting more microorganisms that might be the used biocatalysts in producing...

A resting culture of Rhizopus arrhizus (ATCC 11145) transformed verrucarin A into 16-hydroxyverrucarin A, whereas R. arrhizus transformed verrucarin B into a mixture of 16-hydroxyverrucarin B and 3'-hydroxyverrucarin A. Relative to verrucarins A and B, the 16-hydroxy derivatives showed marked increases in activity, as tested in vivo against P388 mouse leukemia.

Addition of clindamycin to whole-cell cultures of Streptomyces coelicolor MUller resulted in the loss of in vitro activity against organisms sensitive to clindamycin. Incubation of such culture filtrates with alkaline phosphatase generated a biologically active material identified as clindamycin. Fermentation broths containing inactivated clindamycin yielded clindamycin 3-phosphate, the structu...

Nocardia species aromatized 19-hydroxyprogesterone, 3beta, 19-dihydroxy-pregn-5-en-20-one 3-acetate and pregn-5-ene-3beta, 19, 20beta-triol 3-acetate, without cleavage of the side chain, into 3-hydroxy-19-norpregna-1,3,5 (10)-trien-20-one. Septomyxa affinis aromatized the ring A and cleaved the side chain of 19-hydroxyprogesterone to yield estrone. With 19-hydroxypregna-4, 7-diene-3, 20-dione a...

Seventy-seven microorganisms were examined for their ability to metabolize the antineoplastic agent N-methylcolchiceinamide, an analog of colchicine. Five streptomycetes exhibited significant metabolism, and Streptomyces griseus NRRL B-599 completely converted the substrate to three metabolites. In preparative-scale studies, N-dealkylation resulted in the production of colchiceinamide, the majo...

The aim of the paper is to present microbial transformation reactions as a step in the preparation of drugs or their key intermediates from plant derived compounds. Described are some successful applications of microbial transformation processes for preparation of steroid drugs and/or their important intermediates as well as some microbial transformations of terpenes, alkaloids, flavonoids and ...

Microbial transformation has been successfully applied in the production of steroid intermediates with therapeutic use and commercial value in pharmaceutical industry due to its high regio- and stereo-selectivity. As such, it is still important to screen microbial strains with novel activity or more efficient abilities in the development of the commercial steroid industry. Biotransformation of ...