A systems and cell biological approach to biodesign in the oleaginous yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica

Yarrowia lipolytica is an oleaginous yeast that has great potential as a biofuel production host and is an excellent experimental organism for systems and cell biological studies of lipid accumulation. In addition to development of several strains used to accelerate molecular genetic approaches, we have built a "cell atlas" for Yarrowia by generating a variety of strains with GFP tagged proteins that localize to specific organelles. The strains have been utilized to study organelle dynamics during lipid accumulation. We have also generated multi-omic analyses comparing cells grown under limiting and non-limited nitrogen conditions. Our approach generates a catalog of candidate genes whose products play a role in lipid accumulation and may be involved in gene regulation and organelle dynamics. These candidate genes may subsequently be characterized in deletion and overexpression studies.