Isolation and Characterization of Fusarium verticillioides NKF1 for Unsaturated Fatty Acid Production

Polyunsaturated fatty acid helps to prevent diseases like cardiovascular, inflammation, and cognitive abilities for developmental disorders. The main objective of this research is the screening of polyunsaturated fatty acid producing fungi from soil samples of mangrove from the seashore coastal areas in India. Fusarium verticillioides species showed the presence of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid in the starch yeast-extract medium. Among the representative isolate, F. verticillioides NKF1 was found to grow in a YEP broth medium and produce the maximum lipid. The gas chromatography was used to identify the fatty acids present in fungal strain. Saturated fatty acid such as palmitic acid (C16:0) 0.14/100 g, stearic acid (C18:0) 0.09/100 g, and monounsaturated fatty acid such as oleic acid (C18:1) 0.08/100 g and polyunsaturated fatty acid such as linolenic acid (C18:3ω3) 0.08/100 g were present in significant amount in the fungal strain. Fungal strain F. verticillioides NKF1 was characterized by SEM and molecular characterization by 18S rRNA. The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences were analyzed by 18S rRNA and ITS4 sequences of related fungi were sequenced, and then the data were compared with NCBI database. This newly isolated F. verticillioides NKF1 was found to be a promising culture for the development of an economical method for commercial production of linolenic acid (ω-3 fatty acid).