Development of a promising microbial platform for the production of dicarboxylic acids from biorenewable resources.

BACKGROUND

As a sustainable industrial process, the production of dicarboxylic acids (DCAs), used as precursors of polyamides, polyesters, perfumes, plasticizers, lubricants, and adhesives, from vegetable oil has continuously garnered interest. Although the yeast has been used as a host for DCA production, additional strains are continually investigated to meet productivity thresholds and industrial needs. In this regard, the yeast , a potential candidate strain, has been screened. However, the lack of genetic and physiological information for this uncommon strain is an obstacle that merits further research. To overcome this limitation, we attempted to develop a method to facilitate genetic recombination in this strain and produce high amounts of DCAs from methyl laurate using engineered .

RESULTS

In the current study, we first developed efficient genetic engineering tools for the industrial application of . To increase homologous recombination (HR) efficiency during transformation, the cell cycle of the yeast was synchronized to the S/G2 phase using hydroxyurea. The HR efficiency at and loci increased from 56.3% and 41.7%, respectively, to 97.9% in both cases. The original HR efficiency at and loci was nearly 0% during the early stationary and logarithmic phases of growth, and increased to 4.8% and 25.6%, respectively. We used the developed tools to construct UHP4, in which β-oxidation was completely blocked. The strain produced 92.5 g/l of dodecanedioic acid (DDDA) from methyl laurate over 126 h in 5-l fed-batch fermentation, with a productivity of 0.83 g/l/h.

CONCLUSIONS

UHP4 produced more DDDA methyl laurate than . Hence, we demonstrated that is a powerful microbial platform for vegetable oil-based DCA production. In addition, by using the developed genetic engineering tools, this emerging yeast could be used for the production of a variety of fatty acid derivatives, such as fatty alcohols, fatty aldehydes, and ω-hydroxy fatty acids.