Microbial Lipids Production From the Mixture of Glucose and Xylose Using Lipomyces Starkeyi

Microbial lipids production from the mixture of glucose and xylose using Lipomyces starkeyi

Philipp Arbter, Sharif Rahman, Ramalingam Subramaniam, Stephen Dufreche, Rakesh Bajpai, and Mark E. Zappi,

Bioprocessing Research Laboratory

Department of Chemical Engineering

University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA

The oleaginous yeast Lipomyces starkeyi is a promising candidate for industrial-scale production of lipids to be ultimately converted into biofuels. The yeast grows rapidly on various carbon sources and can produce lipids up to 75 % of its dry weight. In this work glucose, xylose, and their mixtures were used as feed stocks for microbial lipid production using the yeast. Yield of cells from individual sugars was almost identical. Starting with 30 g/L of different sugars, the biomass obtained with glucose as feed stock was 9.7 g (dry weight)/L whereas with xylose it was 9.6 (dry weight)/L. 9.3 to 9.4 g/L cells were produced when sugar mixtures were used. The glucose/xylose mixture resulted in the highest lipid content of 0.56 g lipid/g dry weight cells. Implications of these results on reactor operation will be discussed in this presentation.