Exploring fatty alcohol-producing capability of Yarrowia lipolytica

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. CONCLUSION: 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. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-016-0512-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.