Exploiting nonionic surfactants to enhance fatty alcohol production in Rhodosporidium toruloides

Abstract

Fatty alcohols (FOHs) are important feedstocks in the chemical industry to produce detergents, cosmetics, and lubricants. Microbial production of FOHs has become an attractive alternative to production in plants and animals due to growing energy demands and environmental concerns. However, inhibition of cell growth caused by intracellular FOH accumulation is one major issue that limits FOH titers in microbial hosts. In addition, identification of FOH‐specific exporters remains a challenge and previous studies towards this end are limited. To alleviate the toxicity issue, we exploited nonionic surfactants to promote the export of FOHs in Rhodosporidium toruloides, an oleaginous yeast that is considered an attractive next‐generation host for the production of fatty acid‐derived chemicals. Our results showed FOH export efficiency was dramatically improved and the growth inhibition was alleviated in the presence of small amounts of tergitol and other surfactants. As a result, FOH titers increase by 4.3‐fold at bench scale to 352.6 mg/L. With further process optimization in a 2‐L bioreactor, the titer was further increased to 1.6 g/L. The method we show here can potentially be applied to other microbial hosts and may facilitate the commercialization of microbial FOH production.

Effect of sodium dodecyl sulfate on the production of L-isoleucine by the fermentation of Corynebacterium glutamicum

“…After 34 h of fermentation, the cell was in the decay stage, and the bacteriostatic factors and metabolites in the fermentation broth caused cell death [ 18 ]. Also, the addition of surfactant SDS destroyed the cell structure and accelerated cell fragmentation and autolysis [ 19 ].…”

Recombination machinery engineering for precise genome editing in methylotrophic yeast Ogataea polymorpha

“…Besides, we provide a feasible approach for the construction of genetically stable O. polymorpha for industrial process by genome integration of up to four gene expression cassettes, and the production of fatty acid-derived chemicals in O. polymorpha from both glucose and methanol were also achieved. Despite a lower titer ( Cordova et al., 2020 ; D'Espaux et al., 2017 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Mcneil and Stuart, 2017 ), we can expect that further engineering the fatty acid metabolism and methanol utilization would enhance fatty alcohol production as it has been done in S. cerevisiae .…”

Editorial: Physiology, Application, and Bioengineering of Oleaginous Microorganisms

“…The product portfolio was extended to biosynthesize organic acids such as succinic acid and the sugar substitutes such as erythritol by metabolic engineering of Y. lipolytica. In parallel, considerable progress has been made in the metabolic engineering of R. toruloides for producing both lipid-based compounds and other chemicals such as indigoidine, a blue pigment (Wehrs et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2020;Wen et al, 2020).…”