Abstract
Oleaginous yeasts are potent hosts for the renewable production of lipids, fatty acids and derived products, such as biofuels. Several promising processes have been described that produce hydrocarbon drop-in biofuels based on fatty acid decarboxylation and fatty aldehyde decarbonylation. Unfortunately, besides fatty aldehyde toxicity and high reactivity, the most investigated enzyme, aldehyde-deformylating oxygenase, shows unfavorable catalytic properties which hindered high yields in previous metabolic engineering approaches. To demonstrate an alternative alkane production pathway for oleaginous yeasts, we describe the production of biodiesel-like odd-chain alkanes and alkenes, by heterologously expressing a recently discovered light-driven oxidase from Chlorella variabilis (CvFAP) in Yarrowia lipolytica. Providing glucose and light in a synthetic medium we achieved titers of 10.87 mg/L of hydrocarbons using a fatty acid overproducing strain.
Short abstract Oleaginous yeasts are potent hosts for the renewable production of lipids, fatty acids and derived products such as biofuels. Here, we describe, the production of odd-numbered alkanes and alkenes with a length of 17 and 15 carbons by expression a fatty acid photodecarboxylase (CvFAP) from Chlorella variabilis in different Yarrowia lipolytica strains under blue light exposure.
- Abbreviations
- AAR
- acyl-ACP reductase
- ADO
- aldehyde deformylating oxygenase
- Cv/r
- Chlorella variabilis/reinhardtii
- FFA
- free fatty acids
- GMC
- glucose-methanol-choline
- SCO
- single cell oil
- FAP
- fatty acid photodecarboxylase
- FFA
- free fatty acids
- YaliTAR
- Transformation-associated recombination assisted by Y. lipolytica