Impact of Rifampin Induction on the Fermentation Production of Ganoderic Acids by Medicinal Mushroom Ganoderma lucidum

Backgrounds and Objectives: Ganoderic acids are the most valuable secondary metabolites in Ganoderma lucidum traditional medicinal mushrooms, which have shown antitumor properties in many studies. However, application of ganoderic acids is limited due to low yield production. Recently, it was shown that static liquid culture could be a proven technology for producing ganoderic acids in Ganoderma lucidum, and that applying elicitors could be a potential strategy to improve their production. Materials and Methods: In this work, the effect of rifampin, a cyto-chromes P450 inducer, on production of ganoderic acids was studied, and Response Surface Methodology was applied to optimize the elicitor induction. Then total ganoderic acid in the harvested mycelia was extracted and its absorbency was measured. Results and Conclusion: The results showed an increase in the concen-tration of ganoderic acid in all samples. Moreover, optimum concentration and induction time of rifampin were obtained. The proposed model predicted the maximum ganoderic acid production as 18.6 mg g-1 in which the optimal concentration and time induction obtained were 100 μM and day 9, respectively. This work demonstrated a useful method for the enhanced production of ganoderic acids by Ganoderma lucidum.