Development of a Defined Medium for Arachidonic Acid Production by Mortierella alpina Using a Visualization Method

Defined medium for arachidonic acid (ARA) production by Mortierella alpina was optimized for its metabolomics study. For this purpose, a visualization method (VM) was applied for the first time. Experiments were designed according to the uniform design with four factors (concentrations of glucose, NaNO 3 , KH 2 PO 4 and MgSO 4 ·7H 2 O) for each at nine levels. Dry cell weight (DCW), ARA yield in DCW [percent ( w / w )] and ARA content in total fatty acids [percent ( w / w )] were considered as the three objectives. Optimization of single-objective function and multi-objective function of two objectives and three objectives was attempted. Optimal DCW, ARA yield and ARA content were predicted to occur in a medium that contained (grams per litre): glucose 35, NaNO 3 1, KH 2 PO 4 7.5 and MgSO 4 ·7H 2 O 2.6. Upon verification, the average tested DCW (12.95 g/l), ARA yield (18.89 %) and ARA content (42.36 %) were fairly close to the predicted values (12.88 g/l, 9.68 % and 35.57 %, respectively). Moreover, DCW, ARA yield and ARA content from the optimum medium increased by 35.68, 47.23 and 30.90 % compared with control, respectively, indicating that VM had succeeded in exploiting the biomass growth and ARA production by M. alpina .