Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

, Volume 42, Issue 9, pp 1255–1262 | Cite as

Exploring medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates production in the engineered yeast Yarrowia lipolytica

  • Cuijuan Gao
  • Qingsheng Qi
  • Catherine Madzak
  • Carol Sze Ki Lin
Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHAs) are a large class of biopolymers that have attracted extensive attention as renewable and biodegradable bio-plastics. They are naturally synthesized via fatty acid de novo biosynthesis pathway or β-oxidation pathway from Pseudomonads. The unconventional yeast Yarrowia lipolytica has excellent lipid/fatty acid catabolism and anabolism capacity depending of the mode of culture. Nevertheless, it cannot naturally synthesize PHA, as it does not express an intrinsic PHA synthase. Here, we constructed a genetically modified strain of Y. lipolytica by heterologously expressing PhaC1 gene from P. aeruginosa PAO1 with a PTS1 peroxisomal signal. When in single copy, the codon optimized PhaC1 allowed the synthesis of 0.205 % DCW of PHA after 72 h cultivation in YNBD medium containing 0.1 % oleic acid. By using a multi-copy integration strategy, PHA content increased to 2.84 % DCW when the concentration of oleic acid in YNBD was 1.0 %. Furthermore, when the recombinant yeast was grown in the medium containing triolein, PHA accumulated up to 5.0 % DCW with as high as 21.9 g/L DCW, which represented 1.11 g/L in the culture. Our results demonstrated the potential use of Y. lipolytica as a promising microbial cell factory for PHA production using food waste, which contains lipids and other essential nutrients.

Keywords

Medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates Yarrowia lipolytica PHA synthase Strain engineering Triolein 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was fully supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU189713) and the State Key Lab of Microbial Technology in Shandong University, China (M2014-03).

Supplementary material

10295_2015_1649_MOESM1_ESM.docx (302 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 302 kb)

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Copyright information

© Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Cuijuan Gao
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
  • Qingsheng Qi
    • 2
  • Catherine Madzak
    • 4
    • 5
  • Carol Sze Ki Lin
    • 3
  1. 1.School of Life Science, Linyi UniversityLinyiPeople’s Republic of China
  2. 2.State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong UniversityJinanPeople’s Republic of China
  3. 3.School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong KongKowloonHong Kong
  4. 4.INRA, UMR1319, Micalis Institute, AgroParisTech Campus, CBAIThiverval-GrignonFrance
  5. 5.INRA, UMR 782 Génie et Microbiologie des Procédés Alimentaires, AgroParisTech Campus, CBAIThiverval-GrignonFrance

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