Аннотация:Aspergillus ustus is one of known producers of extracellular proteolytic enzymes active against hardtodegrade fibrillar proteins such as collagen. In this work the effectof various cultivation methods and media compositions on the ability of A. ustus to produce proteases was investigated. Micromycete was cultivated in submerged andsolidstate conditions on 9 media differing in nitrogen sources. Proteolytic activity of culture liquids was determined spectrophotometrically by reactions with azocaseinat pH 8, 6 and 4 and by zymography with casein. The enzymatic activity determined by azocasein hydrolysis was higher after solidstate cultivation: the most significantactivities were found on the media containing fishmeal hydrolysate+collagen and NaNO3+casein. Results of casein zymography confirmed the data. The lowest activityduring both cultivation modes was observed on the medium without nitrogen sources. Intriguingly sets of proteases secreted under solidstate and submerged conditionswere different. The most active protease discovered under all cultivation conditions had molecular weight of about 50 kDa. After submerged cultivation on some mediaproteases with weights of 25 and 40 kDa were detected but their activity was low. After solidstate cultivation on all media three novel highmolecular proteases(MW>80 kDa) were detected. During submerged cultivation azocaseinolytic activity was observed at all substrate pH values but after cultivation on vermiculite it turnedout that extracellular proteases were most active at pH 8 and least active at pH 4, which may indicate the secretion of highly active alkaline and neutral proteases by themicromycete. Thus, this work established the most suitable cultivation conditions of A. ustus for obtaining highly active extracellular proteases.