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cultivation on vegetable oils that lack essential PUFAs that are available in wild.
However, fishes raised with PUFA-fortified feeds can have a fatty acid composition
similar to their wild counterparts which can ultimately raise the quality of meat
obtained from them (Kwasek et al. 2020).
Targeting the already established system of food production with modern metabolomic engineering strategies can provide an effective mean of fortifying essential
lipids in our diet. Fluxome Sciences A/S, a Denmark-based company, has developed
a PUFA-producing metabolically engineered strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
and used it in place of baker’s yeast strain that is commercially available. The bread
and fermented drinks prepared using this strain showed an improved PUFA profile
in comparison to control. Besides, these single cells can also be consumed as whole
(Plate et al. 2009).
7.7 Conclusion
The presence of lipid-synthesizing apparatus in fungi coupled with the fact that
some of these microbes can even accumulate 60% of their cell dry weight as lipids
is what makes them an attractive candidate for PUFA synthesis. Still the commercial production of PUFA from fungi is not economical. The main economic burden
is the carbon source which is further poorly utilized by current available fungal
strains. Therefore, to realize the true potential of fungi for PUFA production, it is
essential to have a deeper understanding of the underlying lipid regulatory mechanisms operative in these microorganisms. This understanding can give useful
insights for the approaches needed to direct the lipid-synthesizing machinery of
these fungi to produce PUFA more efficiently. In the current scenario, a range of
biological tools are available at hand to manipulate the genome of an organism and
thus alter its metabolic profile. These tools can be utilized to develop strains that
have greater product yield, have the ability to utilize carbon from waste and are nontoxic. An inter-disciplinary approach applying knowledge from all domains including system biology, synthetic biology and metabolic engineering is therefore the
current need of the hour in microbial lipid research.
References
Akpinar-Bayizit A (2014) Fungal lipids: the biochemistry of lipid accumulation. Int J Chem Eng
Appl 5(5):409–414
Asadi SZ, Khosravi-Darani K, Nikoopour H, Bakhoda H (2015) Evaluation of the effect of process
variables on the fatty acid profile of single cell oil produced by Mortierella using solid-state
fermentation. Crit Rev Biotechnol 35(1):94–102
Bellou S, Triantaphyllidou IE, Aggeli D, Elazzazy AM, Baeshen MN, Aggelis G (2016) Microbial
oils as food additives: recent approaches for improving microbial oil production and its polyunsaturated fatty acid content. Curr Opin Biotechnol 37:24–35
R. Gupta and S. Gaur
cultivation on vegetable oils that lack essential PUFAs that are available in wild.
However, fishes raised with PUFA-fortified feeds can have a fatty acid composition
similar to their wild counterparts which can ultimately raise the quality of meat
obtained from them (Kwasek et al. 2020).
Targeting the already established system of food production with modern metabolomic engineering strategies can provide an effective mean of fortifying essential
lipids in our diet. Fluxome Sciences A/S, a Denmark-based company, has developed
a PUFA-producing metabolically engineered strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
and used it in place of baker’s yeast strain that is commercially available. The bread
and fermented drinks prepared using this strain showed an improved PUFA profile
in comparison to control. Besides, these single cells can also be consumed as whole
(Plate et al. 2009).
7.7 Conclusion
The presence of lipid-synthesizing apparatus in fungi coupled with the fact that
some of these microbes can even accumulate 60% of their cell dry weight as lipids
is what makes them an attractive candidate for PUFA synthesis. Still the commercial production of PUFA from fungi is not economical. The main economic burden
is the carbon source which is further poorly utilized by current available fungal
strains. Therefore, to realize the true potential of fungi for PUFA production, it is
essential to have a deeper understanding of the underlying lipid regulatory mechanisms operative in these microorganisms. This understanding can give useful
insights for the approaches needed to direct the lipid-synthesizing machinery of
these fungi to produce PUFA more efficiently. In the current scenario, a range of
biological tools are available at hand to manipulate the genome of an organism and
thus alter its metabolic profile. These tools can be utilized to develop strains that
have greater product yield, have the ability to utilize carbon from waste and are nontoxic. An inter-disciplinary approach applying knowledge from all domains including system biology, synthetic biology and metabolic engineering is therefore the
current need of the hour in microbial lipid research.
References
Akpinar-Bayizit A (2014) Fungal lipids: the biochemistry of lipid accumulation. Int J Chem Eng
Appl 5(5):409–414
Asadi SZ, Khosravi-Darani K, Nikoopour H, Bakhoda H (2015) Evaluation of the effect of process
variables on the fatty acid profile of single cell oil produced by Mortierella using solid-state
fermentation. Crit Rev Biotechnol 35(1):94–102
Bellou S, Triantaphyllidou IE, Aggeli D, Elazzazy AM, Baeshen MN, Aggelis G (2016) Microbial
oils as food additives: recent approaches for improving microbial oil production and its polyunsaturated fatty acid content. Curr Opin Biotechnol 37:24–35
R. Gupta and S. Gaur