University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Production of galactitol from galactose by the oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides IFO0880

Jagtap, Sujit Sadashiv; Bedekar, Ashwini Ashok; Liu, Jing-Jing; Jin, Yong-Su; Rao, Christopher V.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/105495

Description

Title
Production of galactitol from galactose by the oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides IFO0880
Author(s)
  • Jagtap, Sujit Sadashiv
  • Bedekar, Ashwini Ashok
  • Liu, Jing-Jing
  • Jin, Yong-Su
  • Rao, Christopher V.
Issue Date
2019-10-18
Keyword(s)
  • Rhodosporidium toruloides
  • Galactose
  • Galactitol
  • Lipid
  • Aldose reductase
  • Metabolite profiling
Abstract

Background

Sugar alcohols are commonly used as low-calorie sweeteners and can serve as potential building blocks for bio-based chemicals. Previous work has shown that the oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides IFO0880 can natively produce arabitol from xylose at relatively high titers, suggesting that it may be a useful host for sugar alcohol production. In this work, we explored whether R. toruloides can produce additional sugar alcohols.


Results

Rhodosporidium toruloides is able to produce galactitol from galactose. During growth in nitrogen-rich medium, R. toruloides produced 3.2 ± 0.6 g/L, and 8.4 ± 0.8 g/L galactitol from 20 to 40 g/L galactose, respectively. In addition, R. toruloides was able to produce galactitol from galactose at reduced titers during growth in nitrogen-poor medium, which also induces lipid production. These results suggest that R. toruloides can potentially be used for the co-production of lipids and galactitol from galactose. We further characterized the mechanism for galactitol production, including identifying and biochemically characterizing the critical aldose reductase. Intracellular metabolite analysis was also performed to further understand galactose metabolism.


Conclusions

Rhodosporidium toruloides has traditionally been used for the production of lipids and lipid-based chemicals. Our work demonstrates that R. toruloides can also produce galactitol, which can be used to produce polymers with applications in medicine and as a precursor for anti-cancer drugs. Collectively, our results further establish that R. toruloides can produce multiple value-added chemicals from a wide range of sugars.

Publisher
BMC. Springer Nature.
Series/Report Name or Number
Biotechnology for Biofuels; vol. 12, October 2019
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105495
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13068-019-1586-5
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 Sujit Sadashiv Jagtap, Ashwini Ashok Bedekar, Jing-Jing Liu, Yong-Su Jin, and Christopher V. Rao

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