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Statins are a group of extremely successful drugs that lower cholesterol levels in blood; decreasing the risk of heath attack or stroke. In recent years, statins have also been reported to have other biological activities and numerous potential therapeutic uses. Natural statins are lovastatin and compactin, while pravastatin is derived from the latter by biotransformation. Simvastatin, the second leading statin in the market, is a lovastatin semisynthetic derivative. Lovastatin is mainly produced by Aspergillus terreus strains, and compactin by Penicillium citrinum. Lovastatin and compactin are produced industrially by liquid submerged fermentation, but can also be produced by the emerging technology of solid-state fermentation, that displays some advantages. Advances in the biochemistry and genetics of lovastatin have allowed the development of new methods for the production of simvastatin. This lovastatin derivative can be efficiently synthesized from monacolin J (lovastatin without the side chain) by a process that uses the Aspergillus terreus enzyme acyltransferase LovD. In a different approach, A. terreus was engineered, using combinational biosynthesis on gene lovF, so that the resulting hybrid polyketide synthase is able to in vivo synthesize 2,2-dimethylbutyrate (the side chain of simvastatin). The resulting transformant strains can produce simvastatin (instead of lovastatin) by direct fermentation.

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Molecular studies were performed to establish the causes of the superior lovastatin productivity of a novel solid-state fermentation (SSF) process, in relation with liquid submerged fermentation (SmF; 20 mg/g vs. 0.65 mg/ml). In SSF, biosynthetic genes lovE and lovF transcripts accumulated to high levels from day 1 to day 7. In this period, lovE transcript showed 4.6-fold higher accumulation levels (transcription) than the highest level detected in SmF (day 5). lovF transcript showed two-fold higher expression than the highest point in SmF. In SmF, the expression was only detected clearly on day 5 and, showing a 50% decrease, on day 7. These results show that the higher lovastatin production in SSF is related to a more intense transcription of these biosynthetic genes. A strong expression of gldB gene in lovastatin SSF indicated that Aspergillus terreus senses osmotic stress during the course of SSF, but not in SmF. However, when a liquid medium of identical concentration was used in SmF, lovastatin production decreased in SSF.