Engineering Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce odd chain‐length fatty alcohols

Abstract

Fatty aldehydes and alcohols are valuable precursors used in the industrial manufacturing of a myriad of specialty products. Herein, we demonstrate the de novo production of odd chain‐length fatty aldehydes and fatty alcohols in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by expressing a novel biosynthetic pathway involving cytosolic thioesterase, rice α‐dioxygenase and endogenous aldehyde reductases. We attained production titers of ∼20 mg/l fatty aldehydes and ∼20 mg/l fatty alcohols in shake flask cultures after 48 and 60 h respectively without extensive fine‐tuning of metabolic fluxes. In contrast to prior studies which relied on bi‐functional fatty acyl‐CoA reductase to produce even chain‐length fatty alcohols, our biosynthetic route exploits α‐oxidation reaction to produce odd chain‐length fatty aldehyde intermediates without using NAD(P)H cofactor, thereby conserving cellular resource during the overall synthesis of odd chain‐length fatty alcohols. The biosynthetic pathway presented in this study has the potential to enable sustainable and efficient synthesis of fatty acid‐derived chemicals from processed biomass. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 842–851. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 02, 2015
Source ID
10.1002/bit.25856

Entities

People

  • Adison Wong
  • Jee Loon Foo
  • Joey Ng
  • Matthew Wook Chang
  • Ying‐jin Yuan
  • Ying‐xiu Cao
  • Zhu Jin

Organizations

  • Arthritis National Research Foundation
  • Defense Threat Reduction Agency
  • Ministry of Science and Technology
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China
  • National University of Singapore
  • Tianjin University

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Electrochemical Surface Science
  • Microbial Pathology
  • Organic Chemistry