Whole Genome Sequencing and RNA-seq-Driven Discovery of New Targets That Affect Carotenoid Synthesis in Phaffia rhodozyma

Zhihui Shi; Xiaoxian He; Hailiang Zhang; Xuena Guo; Yanfei Cheng; Xuelian Liu; Zhaoyue Wang; Xiuping He

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.837894

Whole Genome Sequencing and RNA-seq-Driven Discovery of New Targets That Affect Carotenoid Synthesis in Phaffia rhodozyma

Front Microbiol. 2022 Mar 21:13:837894. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.837894. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zhihui Shi^{1

2}, Xiaoxian He^{1

2}, Hailiang Zhang³, Xuena Guo¹, Yanfei Cheng¹, Xuelian Liu³, Zhaoyue Wang¹, Xiuping He^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Direct-Fed Microbial Engineering, Beijing DaBeiNong Science and Technology Group Co., Ltd. (DBN), Beijing, China.

Abstract

Carotenoids are unsaturated compounds with terpene groups. Among them, astaxanthin has strong antioxidant properties. It is widely used in aquaculture, food, medicine, and cosmetics with a broad market prospect. Phaffia rhodozyma is an important microorganism that synthesizes astaxanthin, but its wild strains have low pigment content, long growth cycle, and low fermentation temperature. Therefore, it is important to research the genetic improvement of the physiological and biochemical properties of P. rhodozyma. In this study, the atmospheric and room temperature plasma mutagenesis technology was adopted, through the functional evolution of the carotenoid production performance; then, through the comparative analysis of the genomics and transcriptomics of the wild strain and evolved strain, the key factor GST1 gene that affects carotenoid synthesis was discovered.

Keywords: GST1; Phaffia rhodozyma; astaxanthin; carotenoids; genomics; transcriptomics.