[Heterologous nitrate transporter enhance lipid accumulation in Yarrowia lipolytica through coordinated regulation of lipid metabolism].

Authors

Yongyi Liao, Anlian Zhou, Shiqi Yan, Zehuan Liu, Jianghai Lin

Published in

Sheng wu gong cheng xue bao = Chinese journal of biotechnology. Volume 42. Issue 6. Pages 2583-2598. Jun 25, 2026.

Abstract

To investigate the effects of exogenous nitrogen transport-related genes on lipid synthesis in Yarrowia lipolytica and explore the regulatory mechanism linking nitrogen transport pathways to lipid accumulation, two nitrate reductase genes and one nitrate transporter gene derived from Rhodosporidium toruloides were integrated into the genome of Yarrowia lipolytica for heterologous expression. The regulatory roles of these nitrogen metabolism-related genes on lipid synthesis capacity in the host strain were systematically investigated. The results demonstrated that the introduction of these exogenous genes significantly increased lipid production, among which the engineered strain Po1g-NT17 heterologously expressing the nitrate transporter exhibited the most prominent performance: when ammonium nitrate was used as the nitrogen source, its lipid content reached 34.49%, representing a 28.22% increase compared with the control strain. Further RT-qPCR analysis revealed that this nitrate transporter exerted its effects through the coordinated regulation of nitrogen metabolism and lipid synthesis pathways: it significantly upregulated key genes involved in lipid biosynthesis (dga2, fas1/fas2, acc, acs, acl-β), thereby enhancing the synthetic flux, while downregulating genes related to lipid degradation (faa1, mfe1, tgl3), thereby reducing lipid catabolism. This study uncovered the potential molecular mechanism by which nitrogen metabolism genes regulate lipid biosynthesis in Y. lipolytica. The findings provide a feasible strategy for optimizing lipid production through the engineering of nitrogen metabolic pathways, and establish a theoretical foundation and technical support for the industrial production of microbial lipids.

PMID:
42343799
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 25 Jun 2026.

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