Metabolic engineering of Yarrowia lipolytica for itaconic acid production.

Itaconic acid is a naturally produced organic acid with diverse applications as a replacement for petroleum derived products. However, its industrial viability as a bio-replacement has been restricted due to limitations with native producers. In this light, Yarrowia lipolytica is an excellent potential candidate for itaconic acid production due to its innate capacity to accumulate citric acid cycle intermediates and tolerance to lower pH. Here, we demonstrate the capacity to produce itaconic acid in Y. lipolytica through heterologous expression of the itaconic acid synthesis enzyme, resulting in an initial titer of 33 mg/L. Further optimizations of this strain via metabolic pathway engineering, enzyme localization, and media optimization strategies enabled 4.6g/L of itaconic acid to be produced in bioreactors, representing a 140-fold improvement over initial titer. Moreover, these fermentation conditions did not require additional nutrient supplementation and utilized a low pH condition that enabled the acid form of itaconic acid to be produced. Overall yields (0.058 g/g yield from glucose) and maximum productivity of 0.045 g/L/h still provide areas for future strain improvement. Nevertheless, this work demonstrates that Y. lipolytica has the potential to serve as an industrially relevant platform for itaconic acid production.

Metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for itaconic acid production.

Renewable alternatives for petroleum-derived chemicals are achievable through biosynthetic production. Here, we utilize Saccharomyces cerevisiae to enable the synthesis of itaconic acid, a molecule with diverse applications as a petrochemical replacement. We first optimize pathway expression within S. cerevisiae through the use of a hybrid promoter. Next, we utilize sequential, in silico computational genome-scanning to identify beneficial genetic perturbations that are metabolically distant from the itaconic acid synthesis pathway. In this manner, we successfully identify three non-obvious genetic targets (∆ade3 ∆bna2 ∆tes1) that successively improve itaconic acid titer. We establish that focused manipulations of upstream pathway enzymes (localized refactoring) and enzyme re-localization to both mitochondria and cytosol fail to improve itaconic acid titers. Finally, we establish a higher cell density fermentation that ultimately achieves itaconic acid titer of 168 mg/L, a sevenfold improvement over initial conditions. This work represents an attempt to increase itaconic acid production in yeast and demonstrates the successful utilization of computationally guided genetic manipulation to increase metabolic capacity.