DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

I was hoping to find a route from dopamine to levodopa using fermentation, but have not found one in the literature. Come on you biochemists, give me a hand here!

However, I have found a route from tyrosine to levodopa.

A 175 gm banana contains 270 mg tyrosine [1]. Yogurt also contains tyrosine.

A paper by Krishnaveni et al [2] describes "the transformation of L-tyrosine to L-dopa by Acremonium rutilum, a fungal tyrosinase producer, isolated from decomposed banana stud."

Their method used:
"Enriched potato dextrose broth was used for optimization studies, which induced high levels of L-dopa under submerged fermentation. A. rutilum gave the maximum L-dopa production (0.89 mg/ml) and tyrosinase activity (1095 U/mg) under the optimized parameters, that is, a temperature of 25 degrees C, pH 5.5, an inoculum size of 2.5 ml, and an incubation time of 72-120 h, with L-tyrosine (5 mg/ml) as substrate."


I don't know whether this is the mechanism I'm seeing, but it is a potential danger.

I cannot find any information about rutilm. But Wikipedia states that:
"Many species of Acremonium are recognized as opportunistic pathogens of man and animals, causing mycetoma, onychomycosis, and hyalohyphomycosis. Clinical manifestations of hyalohyphomycosis caused by Acremonium include arthritis, osteomyelitis, peritonitis, endocarditis, pneumonia, cerebritis and subcutaneous infection." [3]

[1] http://www.appliedhealth.com/index.p...icle&id=114225

[2] "Transformation of L-tyrosine to L-dopa by a novel fungus, Acremonium rutilum, under submerged fermentation."
Krishnaveni R, Rathod V, Thakur MS, Neelgund YF.
Curr Microbiol. 2009 Feb;58(2):122-8. Epub 2009 Jan 3.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123033# (abstract only)

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acremonium

John