Collaborative Research: A New Yeast Biomanufacturing Platform for Making High-value Products from Oils and Fats

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The United States produces more than 20 million tons of plant oils and animal fats every year. Used for food and feed applications, they generate low or limited economic value. The plant oils and fats wasted during food production negatively impact the environment. This project aims to develop a yeast to convert oils and fats into a series of high-value products. These products might include omega-3 fatty acids, carotenoids, and wax esters. If successful, this project could use yeast to create products that improve human health with minimal environmental impact. High school teachers will be trained in the lab, as will undergraduates and graduate students. Current outreach activities to the Texas School for the Deaf and a local K-5 elementary school will be augmented, as will efforts to recruit underrepresented minorities and women to pursue STEM training. Overall, the project will support the development of a workforce prepared for leadership in the growing bioeconomy industry.The oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica will be metabolically engineered to convert oils and fats into high-value products. Both cellular engineering and bioreaction engineering research will be integrated in this project to establish this biomanufacturing platform. First, the yeast will be engineered both metabolically and physiologically to facilitate the uptake of extracellular substrate and the bioconvesion of intracellular fatty acids. Second, the uptake of fatty acid substrates will be enhanced through modifying cellular transporters. Third, biosynthesis pathways will be created and optimized to convert the intracellular fatty acids into omega-3 fatty acids, wax esters, carotenoids, and other products. Forth, on the bioprocess side, mass transfer limitations of extracellular oils/fats/fatty acids in a bioreactor caused by the insolubility of the hydrophobic substrates in aqueous medium will be reduced through the use of a multi-phase (gas, oil, aqueous) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. Ultimately, a general bioreactor model will be built to describe processes for both extracellular mass transfer of oils/fats and the intracellular bioconversion of fatty acids into each specific high-value product.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.