High purity, high yield procedure for butyrolactone I production from Aspergillus terreus

Two experimental design methods, Plackett-Burman and Box-Behnken, were used to optimize media for the production of butyrolactone I, a chemical inhibitor of eukaryotic cyclin-dependent kinases, synthesized by Aspergillus terreus. The optimized medium produced as much as ten fold more butyrolactone I than the original medium. An isolation procedure is also described which generates highly purified butyrolactone I, free from other secondary metabolites produced by this strain of A. terreus. The results of this study provide the means to produce highly purified preparations of butyrolactone I.