Extensive studies on the metabolites of penicillia which cause so-called “yellow rice”led to the successful isolation of a variety of bioactive compounds.Recently,
the cell fusion between genetically close penicillia has been carried out to give some hybrid strains,which produced a variety of novel compounds,indicating that
the cell fusion technique is quite useful for finding of new bioactive compounds. In this study, a hybrid strain KO 0193was generated using Penicillium citreo-viride
Biourge IFO 4692, a producer of phenolic compounds, and P. pedemontanum IFO 9583, a producer of pyrone-type compounds, by means of cell fusion technique
using polyethylene glycol.
The metabolites of the hybrid strain KO 0193 was extracted after culture of 2 months. Further isolation of this extract was carried out using different kinds of chromatography to give rise to some novel compounds.These compounds have a carbon skeleton of isochroman and evidently different from any other metabolites which have been isolated. These isochromans have been proved to promote the growth of hypocotyls of Lactuca sativa (lettuce).

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