MIT Researchers Enhance Lipid production in Yeast

Microbial factories have been engineered to produce lipids from carbohydrate feedstocks for production of biofuels and oleochemicals. However, the best yields obtained up to now are still insufficient for commercial lipid production. The team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Kangjian Qiao engineered 13 strains of Yarrowia lipolytica with synthetic pathways converting glycolytic NADH into the lipid precursors.

The best engineered strain achieved a 25% increase in production of fatty acid methyl esters/g-glucose over previously engineered yeast strains. The oxygen requirements of the highest producing strain were also reduced due to decreased NADH oxidization via aerobic respiration.

These results suggest that metabolic engineering could enable commercialization of microbial carbohydrate-based lipid production.