• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.379-385
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• 1997

Several protease-deficient mutants of Aspergillus niger have been isolated by halo-screening on skim milk plate after UV irradiation of conidiospores. The extracellular proteolytic activities of the mutant strains grown in an optimized medium varied from 3% to 85% of that of the parental strain. Especially, two mutant strains named as ANPD-129 and ANPD-153, which had 3% and 49% of acid protease activity of the parental strain, respectively, were further characterized both physiologically and genetically. The growth rates of the mutants, ANPD-129 and ANPD-153, were similar to that of the parental strain, unlike other protease-deficient mutants. The diploid formed between the two mutants restored protease activity to a similar level of that of the parental strain. This result revealed that ANPD-129 and ANPD-153 had mutations at different loci. Using master strains with marked chromosomes these loci were assigned to linkage groups. The mutation locus (prt129) in ANPD-129 was assigned to linkage group VI and the locus (prt153) in ANPD-153 to linkage group III.