Monday, July 30, 2007 - 10:45 AM
S22

Efficient and low-cost carotenoid production using an oleaginous yeast

Josh Trueheart1, Maria Mayorga2, Joshua Dunn2, Reed Doten2, Dan Dueppen2, and Etchell Cordero2. (1) Microbia, Inc., 60 Westview St., Lexington, MA 02421, (2) Microbia Precision Engineering, One Kendall Square, Building 300, Cambridge, MA 02139

The majority of today’s carotenoid market (~ $1B aggregate size) is supplied by products either chemically synthesized from a petrochemical based process or extracted from natural sources.  A relatively small percentage of carotenoid products are manufactured using fermentation processes, which have rarely attained a competitive cost position relative to the other sources.  We are currently developing a fermentation-based process to produce carotenoids using Yarrowia lipolytica as the host organism.  Yarrowia is a yeast strain with a history of industrial use (e.g. for citric acid production), and we are leveraging the organism’s ability to accumulate lipid to facilitate the efficient production of lipophilic specialty chemicals from low-cost raw materials.  This intrinsic physiological advantage, together with its genetic tractability, make Yarrowia an attractive production host for carotenoids despite the fact that it does not naturally produce carotenoids.  Our team has constructed strains containing modified endogenous genes as well as heterologous genes in order to generate a host for the production of beta-carotene and multiple xanthophylls.  Fermentation process development and product recovery efforts have resulted in a manufacturing approach to deliver low-cost, high quality carotenoid products.


Web Page: www.microbia.com

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