Metabolic Engineering of Yarrowia lipolytica for Zeaxanthin Production.

Guilin Zhang, Jing Chen, Yongzhen Wang, Zhen Liu, Xiangzhao Mao

Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 2023 Sep 20

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Zeaxanthin is a carotenoid, a dihydroxy derivative of β-carotene. Zeaxanthin has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and neuroprotective properties. In this study, Yarrowia lipolytica was used as a host for the efficient production of zeaxanthin. The strain Y. lipolytica PO1h was used to construct the following engineered strains for carotenoid production since it produced the highest β-carotene among the Y. lipolytica PO1h- and Y. lipolytica PEX17-HA-derived strains. By regulating the key nodes on the carotenoid pathway through wild and mutant enzyme comparison and successive modular assembly, the β-carotene concentration was improved from 19.9 to 422.0 mg/L. To provide more precursor mevalonate, heterologous genes mvaE and mvaSMT were introduced to increase the production of β-carotene by 27.2% to the yield of 536.8 mg/L. The β-carotene hydroxylase gene crtZ was then transferred, resulting in a yield of zeaxanthin of 326.5 mg/L. The oxidoreductase RFNR1 and CrtZ were then used to further enhance zeaxanthin production, and the yield of zeaxanthin was up to 775.3 mg/L in YPD shake flask.

Citation

Guilin Zhang, Jing Chen, Yongzhen Wang, Zhen Liu, Xiangzhao Mao. Metabolic Engineering of Yarrowia lipolytica for Zeaxanthin Production. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry. 2023 Sep 20;71(37):13828-13837