Alkane utilisation by Cladosporium resinae: the importance of extended lag phases when assessing substrate optima

Abstract Lag phases were shown to be important when assessing substrate optima for alkane utilisation by filamentous fungi. Failure to take the progressively longer lag phase (in respect to carbon chain length) into consideration may have led previous workers, who used single point biomass measurements as an indication of growth, to underestimate the potential of fungi to grow on alkanes such as octadecane. For a variety of fungi tested, optimum substrates of somewhat longer chain-length than normally reported were found by using growth rates as indicators of best growth, e.g., octadecane for Cladosporium resinae .