LITERATURE 



117 



character of producing a brilliant red soluble pigment is utilized by 

 the Chinese to color various food products. Certain Chinese so- 

 called wines, Chinese red-rice, and soybean cheeses are such products 

 imported into the United States. This organism has been found in 

 silage where it sometimes caused the formation of large "balls" up 

 to one-third meter in diameter.^ 



The conidia are large and are found singly on the conidiophores, 

 or in short chains. The asci (the fungus is homothallic) are produced 

 in perithecia which are rather small, at least in the strains studied 



Fig. 70. Monascus purpurcus: 1 and 2, mycelium and conidia; 3, 4, and 5, 

 oogonium and antheridium ; 7, ascogenous and ordinary hyphae ; 6, perithecium. 



in this laboratory, and the oogonia and antheridia may be easily 

 seen in unstained Petri plate cultures or in stained slide preparations. 

 Although this organism had not been cultured in our laboratories 

 here in Minnesota for over fifteen years, we isolated this species as 

 an air contaminant on one occasion, and years previous to that 

 Henrici had isolated another strain. It is undoubtedly not very 

 common, however. Oilman does not list it as ever being found in 

 soil. 



LITERATURE 



1. BiouRGE, P., Les moissures du groupe Penicillium Link. Etude mono- 



graphique, La cellule, 33, 1 (1923). 



2. Buchanan, E., and R. Buchanan, Bacteriology, Macmillan, New York, 



4th ed., 1938. 



3. Buchanan, R., Monascus purpureus in silage, Mycologia, 2, 99 (1910). 



4. Conant, N. F., D. S. Martin, D. T. Smith, R. D. Baker, and J. L. Calla- 



way, Manual of Clinical Mycology, Saunders, Philadelphia, 1944. 



5. Dodge, C. W., Medical Mycology, Mosby, St. Louis, 1935. 



6. Emmons, C. W., The ascocarps in species of PenicilUum, Mycologia, 27, 



128 (1935). 



7. , Misuse of the name "Trichophyton rosaceum" for a saprophytic 



Fusarium, J. Bact., 47, 197 (1944). 



