Addition of methionine and low cultivation temperatures increase palmitoleic acid production by engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Engineering Scheffersomyces segobiensis for palmitoleic acid-rich lipid production

Palmitoleic acid (POA; C16:1) is an essential high-value ω-7-conjugated fatty acid with beneficial bioactivities and potential applications in the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries. Previously, the oleaginous yeast Scheffersomyces segobiensis DSM27193 has been identified as a promising production host as an alternative for POA extraction from plant or animal sources. Here, the POA-producing capacity of this host was further expanded by optimizing the fermentation process and molecular strain engineering. Specifically, a dual fermentation strategy (O-S dynamic regulation strategy) focused on the substrate and dissolved oxygen concentration was designed to eliminate ethanol and pyruvate accumulation during fermentation. Key genes influencing POA production, such as jen, dgat, ole were identified on the transcriptional level and were subsequently over-expressed. Furthermore, the phosphoketolase (Xpk)/phosphotransacetylase (Pta) pathway was introduced to improve the yield of the precursor acetyl-CoA from glucose. The resulting cell factory SS-12 produced 7.3 g/L of POA, corresponding to an 11-fold increase compared to the wild type, presenting the highest POA titre reported using oleaginous yeast to date. An economic evaluation based on the raw materials, utilities and facility-dependent costs showed that microbial POA production using S. segobiensis can supersede the current extraction method from plant oil and marine fish. This study reports the construction of a promising cell factory and an effective microbial fermentation strategy for commercial POA production.

De Novo Biosynthesis of Free Vaccenic Acid with a Low Content of Oleic Acid in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Omega-7 (ω-7) fatty acids have potential application in the fields of nutraceutical, agricultural, and food industry. The natural ω-7 fatty acids are currently from plants or vegetable oils, which are unsustainable and limited by the availability of plant sources. Here, we developed an innovative biosynthetic route to produce vaccenic acid (C18:1 ω-7) while minimizing oleic acid (C18:1 ω-9) content in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We have engineered S. cerevisiaeto produce C18:1 ω-7 by expressing a fatty acid elongase from Rattus norvegicus. To reduce the content of C18:1 ω-9, the endogenous desaturase Ole1 was replaced by the desaturase, which has specific activity on palmitoyl-coenzyme A (C16:0-CoA). Finally, the production of free C18:1 ω-7 was improved by optimizing the source of cytochrome b5 and overexpressing endoplasmic reticulum chaperones. After combining these strategies, the yield of C18:1 ω-7 was increased from 0 to 9.3 mg/g DCW and C18:1 ω-9 was decreased from 25.2 mg/g DCW to 1.6 mg/g DCW. This work shows a de novo synthetic pathway to produce the highest amount of free C18:1 ω-7 with a low content of C18:1 ω-9 in S. cerevisiae.

Metabolic engineering to produce palmitic acid or palmitoleic acid in an oleic acid-producing Corynebacterium glutamicum strain

Focusing on the differences in the catalytic properties of two type I fatty acid synthases FasA and FasB, the fasA gene was disrupted in an oleic acid-producing Corynebacterium glutamicum strain. The resulting oleic acid-requiring strain whose fatty acid synthesis depends only on FasB exhibited almost exclusive production (217 mg/L) of palmitic acid (C16:0) from 1% glucose under the conditions supplemented with the minimum concentration of sodium oleate for growth. Plasmid-mediated amplification of fasB led to a 1.47-fold increase in palmitic acid production (320 mg/L), while fasB disruption resulted in no fatty acid production, with excretion of malonic acid (30 mg/L). Next, aiming at conversion of the palmitic acid producer to a producer of palmitoleic acid (POA, C16:1Δ9), we introduced the Pseudomonas nitroreducens Δ9-desaturase genes desBC into the palmitic acid producer. Although this resulted in failure, we noticed the emergence of suppressor mutants that exhibited the oleic acid-non-requiring phenotype. Production experiments revealed that one such mutant M-1 undoubtedly produced POA (17 mg/L) together with palmitic acid (173 mg/L). Whole genomic analysis and subsequent genetic analysis identified the suppressor mutation of strain M-1 as a loss-of-function mutation for the DtxR protein, a global regulator of iron metabolism. Considering that DesBC are both iron-containing enzymes, we investigated the conditions for increased iron availability to improve the DesBC-dependent conversion ratio of palmitic acid to POA. Eventually, supplementation of both hemin and the iron chelator protocatechuic acid in the engineered strain dramatically enhanced POA production to 161 mg/L with a conversion ratio of 80.1%. Cellular fatty acid analysis revealed that the POA-producing cells were really equipped with unnatural membrane lipids comprised predominantly of palmitic acid (85.1% of total cellular fatty acids), followed by non-native POA (12.4%).

Overproduction of palmitoleic acid from corn stover hydrolysate by engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Palmitoleic acid (POA) has been widely applied to nutrition and pharmaceutical industry. However, high cost of scale-up fermentation restricts the extensive application of POA. Hence, we investigated the availability of corn stover hydrolysate (CSH) as carbon source in POA production by engineered S. cerevisiae. Although the yeast growth was inhibited to some extent by CSH, the POA production with CSH was slightly higher than that with pure glucose. The C/N ratio of 120 and addition of 1 g/L lysine raised the POA titer up to 2.19 g/L and 2.05 g/L, respectively. Two-stage cultivation could increase the POA titer by upregulating the gene expression of key enzymes in fatty acid synthesis pathway. A high POA content of 57.5% (v/v) and a highest POA titer of 6.56 g/L were achieved under the optimized conditions. These findings provide a feasible approach for sustainable production of POA or its derivatives from CSH.

Validated Growth Rate-Dependent Regulation of Lipid Metabolism in Yarrowia lipolytica

Given the strong potential of Yarrowia lipolytica to produce lipids for use as renewable fuels and oleochemicals, it is important to gain in-depth understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying its lipid accumulation. As cellular growth rate affects biomass lipid content, we performed a comparative proteomic analysis of Y. lipolytica grown in nitrogen-limited chemostat cultures at different dilution rates. After confirming the correlation between growth rate and lipid accumulation, we were able to identify various cellular functions and biological mechanisms involved in oleaginousness. Inspection of significantly up- and downregulated proteins revealed nonintuitive processes associated with lipid accumulation in this yeast. This included proteins related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, ER–plasma membrane tether proteins, and arginase. Genetic engineering of selected targets validated that some genes indeed affected lipid accumulation. They were able to increase lipid content and were complementary to other genetic engineering strategies to optimize lipid yield.

Application of organic acids for plant protection against phytopathogens

The basic tendency in the field of plant protection concerns with reducing the use of pesticides and their replacement by environmentally acceptable biological preparations. The most promising approach to plant protection is application of microbial metabolites. In the last years, bactericidal, fungicidal, and nematodocidal activities were revealed for citric, succinic, α-ketoglutaric, palmitoleic, and other organic acids. It was shown that application of carboxylic acids resulted in acceleration of plant development and the yield increase. Of special interest is the use of arachidonic acid in very low concentrations as an inductor (elicitor) of protective functions in plants. The bottleneck in practical applications of these simple, nontoxic, and moderately priced preparations is the absence of industrial production of the mentioned organic acids of required quality since even small contaminations of synthetic preparations decrease their quality and make them dangerous for ecology and toxic for plants, animals, and human. This review gives a general conception on the use of organic acids for plant protection against the most dangerous pathogens and pests, as well as focuses on microbiological processes for production of these microbial metabolites of high quality from available, inexpensive, and renewable substrates.

Modulation of gluconeogenesis and lipid production in an engineered oleaginous Saccharomyces cerevisiae transformant

We previously created an oleaginous Saccharomyces cerevisiae transformant as a dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1p lacking 29 amino acids at the N-terminal (Dga1∆Np). Because we have already shown that dga1 disruption decreases the expression of ESA1, which encodes histone acetyltransferase, the present study was aimed at exploring how Esa1p was involved in lipid accumulation. We based our work on the previous observation that Esa1p acetylates and activates phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) encoded by PCK1, a rate-limiting enzyme in gluconeogenesis, and subsequently evaluated the activation of Pck1p by yeast growth with non-fermentable carbon sources, thus dependent on gluconeogenesis. This assay revealed that the ∆dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1∆Np had much lower growth in a glycerol-lactate (GL) medium than the wild-type strain overexpressing Dga1∆Np. Moreover, overexpression of Esa1p or Pck1p in mutants improved the growth, indicating that the ∆dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1∆Np had lower activities of Pck1p and gluconeogenesis due to lower expression of ESA1. In vitro PEPCK assay showed the same trend in the culture of the ∆dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1∆Np with 10 % glucose medium, indicating that Pck1p-mediated gluconeogenesis decreased in this oleaginous transformant under the lipid-accumulating conditions introduced by the glucose medium. The growth of the ∆dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1∆Np in the GL medium was also improved by overexpression of acetyl-CoA synthetase, Acs1p or Acs2p, indicating that supply of acetyl-CoA was crucial for Pck1p acetylation by Esa1p. In addition, the ∆dga1 mutant without Dga1∆Np also showed better growth in the GL medium, indicating that decreased lipid accumulation was enhancing Pck1p-mediated gluconeogenesis. Finally, we found that overexpression of Ole1p, a fatty acid ∆9-desaturase, in the ∆dga1 mutant overexpressing Dga1∆Np improved its growth in the GL medium. Although the exact mechanisms leading to the effects of Ole1p were not clearly defined, changes of palmitoleic and oleic acid contents appeared to be critical. This observation was supported by experiments using exogenous palmitoleic and oleic acids or overexpression of elongases. Our findings provide new insights on lipid accumulation mechanisms and metabolic engineering approaches for lipid production.