Accumulation of a Cocoa-Butter-Like Lipid by Yarrowia lipolytica Cultivated on Agro-Industrial Residues

Abstract

Yarrowia lipolytica was cultivated on mixtures of saturated free fatty acids (an industrial derivative of animal fat called stearin), technical glycerol (the main by-product of bio-diesel production facilities), and glucose. The utilization of technical glycerol and stearin as co-substrates resulted in higher lipid synthesis and increased citric acid production than the combination of glucose and stearin. The lipids produced contained significant amounts of stearic acid (50-70%, wt/wt) and lower ones of palmitic (15-20%, wt/wt), oleic (7-20%, wt/wt), and linoleic (2-7%, wt/wt) acid. Single-cell oil having a composition similar to cocoa-butter up to 3.4 g/L was produced, whereas in some cases relatively increased citric acid quantities (up to 14 g/L) were excreted into the growth medium. The microorganism presented a high specificity for lauric, myristic, and palmitic acid, while a discrimination for the stearic acid was observed. As a conclusion, microbial metabolism could be directed by using mixtures of inexpensive saturated fats, glycerol, and glucose as co-substrates, in order to accumulate lipids with predetermined composition, e.g., cocoa-butter equivalents.

Getting Lipids for Biodiesel Production from Oleaginous Fungi

“…by-products such as raw glycerol, producing large amounts of SCO and organic acids (Papanikolaou et al, 2003;Rymowicz et al, 2010;Rywinska et al, 2009). Biochemistry of lipid production on glycerol has been investigated in this organism: glycerol passes into the microbial cell by facilitated diffusion and the conversion is carried out via phosphorylation pathway, with direct phosphorylation to G3P and subsequent dehydrogenation.…”

Microbial lipid production by Rhodosporidium toruloides under sulfate-limited conditions

“…It should be noted that production of CBE using microorganisms was very attractive. In the literature, research efforts have been carried out to advance the total saturated fatty acid content of yeast lipid including extensive strain screening (Pan et al, 2009), inhibition of D9 and D12 desaturase (Moreton, 1985), chemical mutagenesis or genetic engineering of the oleaginous yeast Apiotrichum curvatum (Hassan et al, 1993;Ykema et al, 1989;Ykema et al, 1990), cultivation of A. curvatum on lowoxygenated media (Davies et al, 1990) and supplement of stearin, a cheap donor of stearic acid, into the culture of the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica (Papanikolaou et al, 2001;Papanikolaou et al, 2003). Very recently, we also found that lipid sample produced from Nacetylglucosamine by Cryptococcus curvatus ATCC 20,509 at 22°C was appropriate as CBE (Wu et al, 2010b).…”

Cocoa-Butter-Equivalent Production from <i>Yarrowia lipolytica</i> by Optimization of Fermentation Technology

“…Oleaginous yeasts are able to accumulate intracellular lipid more than 70% (w/w) of their dry matter (Papanikolaou et al, 2003). One common industrial applications of yeast lipid is to synthesize microbial substitutes of cocoa butter (Papanikolaou and Aggelis, 2010;Ratledge and Wynn, 2002).…”