β-carotene is used as a color additive or nutritional supplement for humans and animals, and is commercially produced by chemical synthesis or through Blakeslea trispora fermentation. Previous studies have focused on engineered Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae for heterologous β-carotene production.
Prof. YANG Sheng and colleagues at Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a series of genome editing tools for Y. lipolytica. And they generated an efficient biosynthetic pathway using strong promoters and multiple gene copies for each of the 12 steps.
In their study, using fed-batch fermentation with an optimized medium, the engineered pathway could produce 4 g/L β-carotene, which is stored in lipid droplets within engineered Y. lipolytica cells.
This work demonstrated that Y. lipolytica could be an industrially relevant platform for hydrophobic terpenoid production.
The study was published online in Metabolic Engineering and was supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.
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