Abstract
For the production of trehalose, microorganisms capable of producing trehalose extracellularly were screened from the stock cultures in our laboratory. among them, Micrococcus luteus IFO 12708 showed the highest productivity of trehalose. For the increase of productivity, the mutant strai Hs-208 having higher trehalose production was selected with NTG(N-methyl-N'-nitrosoguanidine) mutagenesis, which led to the decrease of the specific activity of trehalose phosphorylase(3.2-fold) as compared to the wild strain. The optimum condition for the trehalose production was established as follows: 20g/l of glucose and 6g/l of tryptone were used as a sole carbon source and nitrogen source, respectively, and cultivations were carried out at 3$0^{\circ}C$ and pH 6.0. After 20hrs cultivation, addition of 20unit/ml penicillin G led to the higher conversion yield of trehalose. Under the optimum condition, 6.547g/l trehalose was produced with conversion yield of 32.7%.
