Production of fatty acid-derived oleochemicals and biofuels by synthetic yeast cell factories
Journal article, 2016

Sustainable production of oleochemicals requires establishment of cell factory platform strains. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an attractive cell factory as new strains can be rapidly implemented into existing infrastructures such as bioethanol production plants. Here we show high-level production of free fatty acids (FFAs) in a yeast cell factory, and the production of alkanes and fatty alcohols from its descendants. The engineered strain produces up to 10.4 g/L of FFAs, which is the highest reported titre to date. Furthermore, through screening of specific pathway enzymes, endogenous alcohol dehydrogenases and aldehyde reductases, we reconstruct efficient pathways for conversion of fatty acids to alkanes (0.8 mg /L) and fatty alcohols (1.5 g/L), to our knowledge the highest titres reported in S. cerevisiae. This should facilitate the construction of yeast cell factories for production of fatty acids derived products and even aldehyde-derived chemicals of high value.

Olechemicals

Yeast cell factories

Metabolic engineering

Fatty acid

Author

Yongjin Zhou

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Nicolaas Buijs

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Zhu Zhiwei

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Jiufu Qin

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Verena Siewers

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Jens B Nielsen

Chalmers, Biology and Biological Engineering, Systems and Synthetic Biology

Nature Communications

2041-1723 (ISSN) 20411723 (eISSN)

Vol. 7 11709-11709 11709

Subject Categories

Biochemicals

Bioenergy

Biocatalysis and Enzyme Technology

Infrastructure

Chalmers Infrastructure for Mass spectrometry

Areas of Advance

Energy

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

DOI

10.1038/ncomms11709

PubMed

27222209

More information

Latest update

4/6/2022 5