The nonconventional yeast Yarrowia lipolytica degrades very efficiently hydrophobic substrates to produce organic acids, single-cell oil, lipases, and so forth. The aim of this study was to investigate the biochemical behavior and simultaneous production of valuable metabolites such as lipase, citric acid (CA), and single-cell protein (SCP) by Yarrowia lipolytica DSM 3286 grown on various plant oils as sole carbon source. Among tested plant oils, olive oil proved to be the best medium for lipase and CA production. The Y. lipolytica DSM 3286 produced 34.6 ± 0.1 U/mL of lipase and also CA and SCP as by-product on olive oil medium supplemented with yeast extract. Urea, as organic nitrogen, was the best nitrogen source for CA production. The results of this study suggest that the two biotechnologically valuable products, lipase and CA, could be produced simultaneously by this strain using renewable low-cost substrates such as plant oils in one procedure.

Although overexpression of tHMG1 and downregulation of ERG9 enhanced linalool titers threefold in the engineered yeast strain, alleviating linalool toxicity is necessary for further improvement of linalool biosynthesis in yeast.

To screen strains of halotolerant or halophile bacteria which are able to convert isoeugenol to vanillin, 36 different strains of bacteria isolated from the salty environments in Iran were investigated. During growth on isoeugenol, a moderately halotolerant Gram-negative coccobacil showed capability of converting isoeugenol to vanillin. Based on morphological, physiological, and phylogenetic studies, strain CSW4 was classified as a bacterium belonging to the genus Psychrobacter. The bioconversion products were confirmed by thin-layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, and spectral data obtained from UV/Vis spectroscopy, FTIR, and mass-spectroscopy. Using growing cells, vanillin reached its maximum level of 88.18 mg L(-1) after 24 h of reaction time in the presence of 1 g L(-1) isoeugenol, resulting in a molar yield of 10.2%. The use of resting cells led to the optimal yield of vanillin (16.4%) which was obtained after 18-h reaction using 1 g L(-1) isoeugenol and 3.1 g of dry weight of cells per liter harvested at the end of the exponential growth phase. To improve vanillin yield, the effect of substrate concentration on vanillin production under resting cells conditions was also investigated. Using 10 g L(-1) isoeugenol, the maximal vanillin concentration (1.28 g L(-1)) was achieved after a 48-h reaction, without further optimization. The present study brings the first evidence for biotransformation of isoeugenol to vanillin in the genus Psychrobacter.

The interaction of three complexes [Zn(II), Cu(II), and V(IV)] derived from an asymmetric bidentate Schiff-base ligand with DNA and HSA was studied using fluorescence quenching, UV-Vis spectroscopy, viscosity measurements, and computational methods [molecular docking and our Own N-layered Integrated molecular Orbital and molecular Mechanics (ONIOM)]. The obtained results revealed that the DNA and HSA affinities for binding of the synthesized compounds follow as V(IV) > Zn(II) > Cu(II) and Zn(II) > V(IV) > Cu(II), respectively. The distance between these compounds and HSA was obtained based on the Förster's theory of non-radiative energy transfer. Furthermore, computational molecular docking was carried out to investigate the DNA- and HSA-binding pose of the compounds. Molecular docking calculations showed that H-bond, hydrophobic, and π-cation interactions have dominant role in stability of the compound-HSA complexes. ONIOM method was utilized to investigate the HSA binding of the compounds more precisely in which molecular-mechanics method (UFF) and semi-empirical method (PM6) were selected for the low layer and the high layer, respectively. The results show that the structural parameters of the compounds changed along with binding, indicating the strong interaction between the compounds with HSA and DNA. Viscosity measurements as well as computational docking data suggest that all metal complexes interact with DNA, presumably by groove-binding mechanism.

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