title: Exploring fatty alcohol-producing capability of Yarrowia lipolytica.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Fatty alcohols are important oleochemicals widely used in detergents, surfactants and personal care products. Bio-synthesized fatty alcohol provides a promising alternative to traditional fatty alcohol industry. Harnessing oleaginous microorganisms for fatty alcohol production may offer a new strategy to achieve a commercially viable yield that currently still seems to be a remote target.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In this study, we introduced functional fatty acyl-CoA reductase (FAR), TaFAR1 to direct the conversion from fatty acyl-CoA to fatty alcohol in Yarrowia lipolytica (Y. lipolytica), an oleaginous non-conventional yeast showing great lipid-producing capability. Tri-module optimizations including eliminating fatty alcohol degradation pathway, enhancing TaFAR1 expression, and increasing fatty acyl-CoA supply were furtherly conducted, resulting in 63-fold increase in intracellular fatty alcohol-producing capability compared to the starting strain. Thus, this work demonstrated successful construction of first generation of Y. lipolytica fatty alcohol-producing cell factory. Through the study of effect of environmental nutrition on fatty alcohol production, up to 636.89 mg/L intracellular hexadecanol (high fatty alcohol-retaining capability) and 53.32 mg/L extracellular hexadecanol were produced by this cell factory through batch fermentation, which was comparable to the highest production of Saccharomyces cerevisiae under the similar condition.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This work preliminarily explored fatty alcohol-producing capability through mobilization of FAR and fatty acid metabolism, maximizing the intracellular fatty alcohol-producing capability, suggesting that Y. lipolytica cell factory potentially offers a promising platform for fatty alcohol production.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA ; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Industrial Biosystem and Bioprocess Engineering, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, 300308 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Guokun
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA.
authors.forename: Xiaochao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA.
authors.forename: Rishikesh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ghogare
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA.
authors.forename: Pengdong
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA ; College of Food Engineering and Nutritional Science, Shaanxi Normal University, 199 South Chang'an Road, Xi'an, 710062 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yonghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120 USA.
authors.forename: Shulin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
keywords: Fatty acyl-CoA; Fatty alcohol; Metabolic engineering; Yarrowia lipolytica; Yeast