Abstract
Yarrowia lipolytica is an oleaginous ascomycete yeast that accumulates large amounts of lipids and has potential as a biofuel producing organism. Despite a growing scientific literature focused on lipid production by Y. lipolytica, there remain significant knowledge gaps regarding the key biological processes involved. We applied a combination of metabolomic and lipidomic profiling approaches as well as microscopic techniques to identify and characterize the key pathways involved in de novo lipid accumulation from glucose in batch cultured, wild-type Y. lipolytica. We found that lipids accumulated rapidly and peaked at 48 hours during the five day experiment, concurrent with a shift in amino acid metabolism. We also report that exhaustion of extracellular sugars coincided with thickening of the cell wall, suggesting that genes involved in cell wall biogenesis may be a useful target for improving the efficiency of lipid producing yeast strains.
Publication types
-
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
-
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
MeSH terms
-
Chromatography, Gas
-
Chromatography, Liquid
-
Lipid Metabolism*
-
Lipogenesis*
-
Mass Spectrometry
-
Metabolomics*
-
Yarrowia / metabolism*
Grants and funding
The research performed in this study was funded by the US Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research Genome Science Program. It was conducted at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory operated by Battelle for the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. The research was performed using Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DOE Office of Science User Facility sponsored by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. KRP is a William R. Wiley Postdoctoral Fellow at EMSL. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.