Regulation of Carbon Metabolism and Lipid Accumulation in Yarrowia Lipolytica (Rapid Fire)

Regulation of Carbon Metabolism and Lipid Accumulation in Yarrowia lipolytica

            Oleaginous yeasts are species that naturally accumulate high titers of lipid molecules[1, 2]. These are of particular interest because lipids and lipid derived molecules are attractive alternatives to petroleum based chemicals with applications ranging from fuels to food additives[3, 4]. The natural lipid accumulation, however, is known to occur when the growth media contains a high ratio of carbon to nitrogen. Furthermore, lipid accumulation in Y. lipolytica occurs only after a lag phase in which sugar is consumed but lipid is not produced. It has been shown that the deletion of the global AMPK type regulator Snf1 results in the abolition of the lipid accumulation lag phase as well as an increase in the amount of lipid produced[5]. We conducted studies on regulation of substrate transporters as well as enzymes in the lipid metabolism pathway to elucidate the mechanism by which lipid accumulation is controlled in Y. lipolytica.

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3.         Santos, T.M., A. Pinto, A.V. Oliveira, H.L. Ribeiro, C.A. Caceres, E.N. Ito, and H. Azeredo, Physical properties of cassava starch–carnauba wax emulsion films as affected by component proportions. International Journal of Food Science & Technology, 2014.

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5.         Seip, J., R. Jackson, H. He, Q. Zhu, and S.-P. Hong, Snf1 Is a Regulator of Lipid Accumulation in Yarrowia lipolytica. Applied and environmental microbiology, 2013. 79(23): p. 7360-7370.