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Mechanisms of fatty acid synthesis in marine fungus-like protists

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Abstract

Thraustochytrids are unicellular fungus-like protists and are well known for their ability to produce interesting nutraceutical compounds. Significant efforts have been made to improve their efficient production of important fatty acids (FAs), mostly by optimizing fermentation conditions and selecting highly productive thraustochytrid strains. Furthermore, noticeable improvements have been made in understanding the mechanism of FA biosynthesis, allowing for a better understanding of how thraustochytrids assemble these unique metabolites and how their biosynthesis is coupled with other related pathways. This review summarizes recent achievements on two major FA biosynthesis pathways, the standard pathway and the polyketide synthase pathway, and detail features of individual enzymes involved in FA biosynthesis, biotechnological advances in pathway engineering and enzyme characterization, and the discovery of other pathways that affect the efficiency of FA accumulation. Perspectives of biotechnological potential application of thraustochytrids are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the NSFC (31170109) and National Marine Public Welfare Industry Special Scientific Research Project (201305022). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies or any of its subagencies. We thank Prof. Dr. Liangcheng Du of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Chemistry Department, for his critical reading of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin University Center for Marine Environmental Ecology, School of Environmental Science & Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Yunxuan Xie & Guangyi Wang

  2. Department of Microbiology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Guangyi Wang

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  1. Yunxuan Xie
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  2. Guangyi Wang
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Correspondence to Guangyi Wang.

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Xie, Y., Wang, G. Mechanisms of fatty acid synthesis in marine fungus-like protists. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 8363–8375 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6920-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6920-7

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