Engineering the Yeast Factory for the Production of Biochemicals and Biofuels

With the economic development and raised energy crisis, biosynthesis of chemicals, biofuels and materials by using microbial cell factories from renewable resources offers great opportunities. Many microorganisms including bacteria (Escherichia coli, Corynebacterium glutamicum), yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), and fungi (Aspergillus niger) have been successfully genetically engineered chassis for bio-based chemicals production. Among these species, yeasts provide a promising platform owing to the matureness of genetic tools, easy cultivation, and robustness to harsh conditions. In particular, many nonconventional yeasts with specific features of interest have also been exploited to produce bioactive nutraceuticals and structurally complex products, which are generally regarded as safe (GRAS), such as Pichia pastoris with high secretion ability, Yarrowia lipolytica with lipophilic compound accumulation, Rhodosporidium toruloides with microbial lipid production. Therefore, the rational design of efficient yeasts factories will be very valuable for the production of a wide range of high value chemicals.

The adoption of yeast cell factories for desired product production offers a flexible, sustainable and environmentally-friendly alternative to petroleum-based methods. However, most metabolites production level is still maintaining the laboratory, and improved titer, rate, and yield are still required especially for industrial commercialization. Several strategies and approaches are continuously developed to debottleneck these problems, such as genomic engineering, synthetic chromosome rearrangement, metabolic engineering, transcriptional engineering, protein engineering, dynamic control of metabolic fluxes, cellular compartmentalization, adaptive laboratory evolution, system biology and synthetic biology. On the other hand, more low-cost and abundant feedstocks were chosen as substrates, such as lignocellulosic hydrolysates, one-carbon feedstocks, etc. Efficient application or combination of these methods would help to attain the goal of engineering yeasts for desired compounds production and resolve the challenging obstacle for industrial applications.

This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and Review articles on, but not limited to, the following areas:

·        Development and optimization of genetic editing tools in yeasts

·        Bioconversion of lignocellulose and kitchen waste  into biochemicals or biofuels using yeast cell factories

·        Metabolic engineering of yeasts for improving synthetic capability of desired products

·        Efficient production of structurally complex products by co-culturing of yeast and other species

·        Strategies for enhancing stress tolerance of yeast cell factories, including synthetic chromosome rearrangement, transcriptional engineering, metabolic engineering, etc.