are from the lab notes of the people who discovered the Claviceps Paspali strain that produces appreciable amounts of lysergic acid derivatives. This work was done in the late 1950's and early 60's by F. Arcamone, E.B. Chain, A. Tonolo, Lidia Vero, A. Ferretti and others at the Center for Chemical Microbiology in Rome Italy.
Yes the ORIGINAL strain of Claviceps paspali was "wild". After years of unsuccessfuly trying to get Claviceps pupurea, Claviceps litoralis, and other strains to produce any appreciable amounts of lysergic acid compounds in submerged culture, they decided to look at in greater detail the mechanism of sclerotia formation in vivo. For this purpose rye embryos (grass seed) were infected with different strains of Claviceps and then grown on agar. Under these conditions, some Claviceps strains were non-infective, some caused infections but grew in the form of vegetative mycelium without sclerotia formation, and a few strains gave rise to both infection AND sclerotia formation in the plant. One strain in particular was isolated from a sclerotium found on an infected plant of Paspalum distichum on a hill in Rome, and was identified as Claviceps paspali (Steven & Hall). A sub-strain, identified as F-140, was 90% effective in giving rise to sclerotia.
This strain was further improved by selection. It was seen that 3 types/colors of mycelium formed IN SUBMERGED CULTURE: White (28%) Brown (69%) and Violet (3%). ONLY the Violet colored strains produced Lysergic acid in culture. Also, colonies grown on Agar alone did NOT show any marked differences in color! Only when grown in liquid SUBMERGED culture.
These violet strains were further isolated and selected for Lysergic Acid production (by testing cultures with Ehrlich-van Urk reagent and chromographic spotting under UV light)Speaking of UV light, these researchers used high intensity UV light to cause mutations in Claviceps paspali strains. It was found that by irradiating cultures with Long & short wave UV light, MOST of the fungi would be sterilized & killed. However, some of the few that did survive were found to have much more production of Lysergic Acid compounds. A few of the patents egarding C. paspali make off hand reference to this fact.
One strain, F-550, was chosen for large scale testing/production in submerged culture. (See my first post for methods) F-550 and similar strains could produce about 700-1000 micrograms of Lysergic acid a-hydroxyethylamide per ml of culture after only 6 to 9 days growth! Thats about 1 gram per liter. By tweaking various parameters such as % of various chemicals in the culture media, temperature, pH, etc. yields were even higher, at about 1,200 - 1,500 ug. per ml.