Increasing medium chain fatty acids production in Yarrowia lipolytica by metabolic engineering

Background Oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica is an organism of choice for the development of biofuel and oleochemicals. It has become a chassis for metabolic engineering in order to produce targeted lipids. Understanding the function of key-enzymes involved in lipid metabolism is essential to design better routes for enhanced lipid production and for strains producing lipids of interest. Because medium chain fatty acids (MCFA) are valuable compounds for biokerosene production, we previously generated strains capable of producing MCFA up to 12% of total lipid content (Rigouin et al. in ACS Synth Biol 6:1870–1879, 2017). In order to improve accumulation and content of C14 fatty acid (FA), the elongation, degradation and accumulation of these MCFA in Yarrowia lipolytica were studied.