Bioengineering of Oleaginous Yeast Yarrowia lipolytica for Lycopene Production

Oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica is capable of accumulating large amount of lipids. There is a growing interest to engineer this organism to produce lipid-derived compounds for a variety of applications. In addition, biosynthesis of value-added products such as carotenoid and its derivatives have been explored. In this chapter, we describe methods to integrate genes involved in lycopene biosynthesis in Yarrowia . Each bacterial gene involved in lycopene biosynthesis, crtE , crtB , and crtI , will be assembled with yeast promoters and terminators and subsequently transformed into Yarrowia through random integration. The engineered strain can produce lycopene under lipid accumulation conditions.