The aim of this work was to study the effect of addition of different amino acids and sugar nucleotides as metabolic precursors on the production of scleroglucan. A maximum yield of 20.00 g/l and 22.32 g/l was obtained with optimized media supplemented with L-lysine (1.1 mM) and uridine mono-phosphate (UMP), respectively as compared to 16.52 g/l scleroglucan achieved with the control in the absence of metabolic precursors. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.