Aspergillic Acid: An Antibiotic Substance Produced by Aspergillus Flavus

The discovery by White (1) in 1940 that a strain of Aspergillus Jlavus, growing in surface culture on a tryptone-salt medium, produced a highly bactericidal filtrate from which White and Hill in 1943 (2) were able to isolate the active material in crystalline form added another member to the increasing group of chemically and biologically interesting antibiotic compounds.Because the mode of isolation indicated that it was an acidic compound, it was named aspergillic acid.' White and Hill reported studies of its antibiotic properties and its animal toxicity and listed a few of its physical and chemical properties.Using a selected variant of White's strain of Aspergillus $avus, Jones, Rake, and Hamre (8) were able to obtain increased production of aspergillic acid by the mold, and a modification of the isolation method of White and Hill was devised by Menzel, Wintersteiner, and Rake (9).A preliminary report summarizing the results of the investigation of the structure of aspergillic acid was made in 1944 by Dutcher and Wintersteiner (10).Other reports have appeared concerning the production of antibacterial substances by AspergillusjZavus in surface culture, but it is probable that in most cases the substance is aspergillic acid or a mixture of aspergillic acid and the higher melting hydroxyaspergillic acid discovered by Menzel, Winter-Steiner, and Rake (9) in culture filtrates of Aspergillus jlavus grown on a medium containing brown sugar.Glister (11) isolated an active substance