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Improvement of arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid production by increasing the copy number of the genes encoding fatty acid desaturase and elongase into Pichia pastoris

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Abstract

Genes encoding Δ6 desaturase, Δ6 fatty acid elongase, and Δ5 desaturase from the alga, Phaeodactylum tricornutum, were co-expressed in Pichia pastoris to produce arachidonic acid (ARA; 20:4 Δ5, 8, 11, 14) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5 Δ5, 8, 11, 14, 17). A panel of Pichia clones carrying progressively increasing copies of the heterologous gene expression cassette was created using an in vitro multimerization approach. ARA and EPA accumulated up to 0.3 and 0.1% of total fatty acids, respectively, in the recombinant P. pastoris carrying with double copies of these three heterologous genes, as compared to 0.1 and 0.05%, respectively, in the recombinant P. pastoris with single copy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National High-Tech Research and Development Plan (Grant No. 2007AA10Z120 and 2007AA100402). We thank Mrs Xiaoman Gu and Hong Cheng of the Analysis and Testing Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology for GC-MS analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Resource Biology and Biotechnology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Yun-Tao Li, Mao-Teng Li, Chu-Hua Fu, Peng-Peng Zhou, Jian-Min Liu & Long-Jiang Yu

  2. Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Yun-Tao Li, Mao-Teng Li, Chu-Hua Fu, Peng-Peng Zhou, Jian-Min Liu & Long-Jiang Yu

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  1. Yun-Tao Li
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  2. Mao-Teng Li
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  3. Chu-Hua Fu
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  4. Peng-Peng Zhou
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  5. Jian-Min Liu
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  6. Long-Jiang Yu
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Correspondence to Long-Jiang Yu.

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Yun-Tao Li and Mao-Teng Li contributed equally to this work.

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Li, YT., Li, MT., Fu, CH. et al. Improvement of arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid production by increasing the copy number of the genes encoding fatty acid desaturase and elongase into Pichia pastoris . Biotechnol Lett 31, 1011–1017 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-9970-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-9970-z

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