Mucoromycota fungi as powerful cell factories for modern biorefinery

Abstract

Biorefinery employing fungi can be a strategy for valorizing low-cost rest materials, by-products and wastes into several valuable bioproducts through the fungal fermentation. Mucoromycota fungi are soil fungi with a highly versatile metabolic system that positions them as powerful microbial cell factories for biorefinery applications. Lipids, pigments, chitin/chitosan, polyphosphates, ethanol, organic acids and enzymes are main Mucoromycota products that can be refined from the fermentation process and applied in nutrition, chemical or biofuel industries. In addition, Mucoromycota biomass can be used as it is for specific purposes, such as feed. Mucoromycota fungi can be employed in developing co-production processes, whereby several intra-and extracellular products are simultaneously formed in a single fermentation process, and, thus, economic viability of the process can be improved. This mini review provides a comprehensive overview over the recent advances in the production of valuable metabolites by Mucoromycota fungi and fermentation strategies which could be potentially applied in the industrial biorefinery settings. Key points• Biorefineries utilizing Mucoromycota fungi as production cell factories can provide a wide range of bioproducts.• Mucoromycota fungi are able to perform co-production of various metabolites in a single fermentation process.• Versatile metabolism of Mucoromycota allows valorization of a various low-cost substrates such as wastes and rest materials.

Deep learning-enabled Inference of 3D molecular absorption distribution of biological cells from IR spectra

“…It also predicts the cell wall to be rich in proteins and carbohydrates as seen from the strong peaks around 1680 − 1530 cm −1 and 1200 − 1000 cm −1 , respectively. This has been reported in the literature and is in accordance with the expectation that the cell wall consists largely of polysaccharides such as chitin and chitosan, proteins and polyphosphates and that lipid bodies accumulate and grow in the interior of the fungal cells, which thus consists mainly of triglycerides 23 .…”

Identification of novel proteins regulating lipid droplet biogenesis by reverse genetics

“…S5A–H). Supporting the observed abundance, several Mucoromycota lineages possess a remarkable potency to accumulate intracellular lipids ranging from 20 to 80% (w/w) and form lipid bodies up to 20 µm in size (Kosa et al, 2018; Dzurendova et al, 2022). Importantly, LDR proteins predominantly existed in all the major classes of Pezizomycotina and showed a tendency for gene duplication, implying a parallel evolution along with the reported Pezizomycotina-specific metabolism-related genes (Arvas et al, 2007; Wisecaver et al, 2014).…”

Hydrolysis of Edible Oils by Fungal Lipases: An Effective Tool to Produce Bioactive Extracts with Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Potential

“…The R. miehei lipase was selected as the catalyst in this experiment because of its efficient hydrolytic property against most oils involved in the chromogenic plate assays. In addition, R. miehei lipase is an industrially important enzyme with frequent utilization in many biotechnological processes [ 55 ], including production of special fatty acids from lipids, alcoholysis reactions and esterification of various fatty acids [ 56 ]. Moreover, R. miehei lipase can be produced in high yields by fermentation approaches [ 57 ], and stability of the produced enzyme can be maintained even under harsh reaction conditions.…”