4.6 Article

Metabolic Engineering of Non-carotenoid-Producing Yeast Yarrowia lipolytica for the Biosynthesis of Zeaxanthin

Journal

FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.699235

Keywords

Yarrowia lipolytica; metabolic engineering; zeaxanthin; CrtZ; lycopene; beta-carotene

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Funding

  1. Washington State University

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This study constructed the β-carotene biosynthesis pathway in Yarrowia lipolytica and successfully produced zeaxanthin by introducing exogenous crtZ genes. The crtZ gene from Pantoea ananatis showed the best performance for zeaxanthin production, leading to significantly increased zeaxanthin titer through high-copy-number integration. The results demonstrated the potential of Y. lipolytica as a cell factory for zeaxanthin biosynthesis.
Zeaxanthin is vital to human health; thus, its production has received much attention, and it is also an essential precursor for the biosynthesis of other critical carotenoids such as astaxanthin and crocetin. Yarrowia lipolytica is one of the most intensively studied non-conventional yeasts and has been genetically engineered as a cell factory to produce carotenoids such as lycopene and beta-carotene. However, zeaxanthin production by Y. lipolytica has not been well investigated. To fill this gap, beta-carotene biosynthesis pathway has been first constructed in this study by the expression of genes, including crtE, crtB, crtI, and carRP. Three crtZ genes encoding beta-carotene hydroxylase from different organisms were individually introduced into beta-carotene-producing Y. lipolytica to evaluate their performance for producing zeaxanthin. The expression of crtZ from the bacterium Pantoea ananatis (formerly Erwinia uredovora, Eu-crtZ) resulted in the highest zeaxanthin titer and content on the basis of dry cell weight (DCW). After verifying the function of Eu-crtZ for producing zeaxanthin, the high-copy-number integration into the ribosomal DNA of Y. lipolytica led to a 4.02-fold increase in the titer of zeaxanthin and a 721% increase in the content of zeaxanthin. The highest zeaxanthin titer achieved 21.98 +/- 1.80 mg/L by the strain grown on a yeast extract peptone dextrose (YPD)-rich medium. In contrast, the highest content of DCW reached 3.20 +/- 0.11 mg/g using a synthetic yeast nitrogen base (YNB) medium to culture the cells. Over 18.0 g/L of citric acid was detected in the supernatant of the YPD medium at the end of cultivation. Furthermore, the zeaxanthin-producing strains still accumulated a large amount of lycopene and beta-carotene. The results demonstrated the potential of a cell factory for zeaxanthin biosynthesis and opened up an avenue to engineer this host for the overproduction of carotenoids.

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