Advances in the metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Yarrowia lipolytica for the production of β-carotene

Abstract

β-Carotene is one kind of the most important carotenoids. The major functions of β-carotene include the antioxidant and anti-cardiovascular properties, which make it a growing market. Recently, the use of metabolic engineering to construct microbial cell factories to synthesize β-carotene has become the latest model for its industrial production. Among these cell factories, yeasts including Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Yarrowia lipolytica have attracted the most attention because of the: security, mature genetic manipulation tools, high flux toward carotenoids using the native mevalonate pathway and robustness for large-scale fermentation. In this review, the latest strategies for β-carotene biosynthesis, including protein engineering, promoters engineering and morphological engineering are summarized in detail. Finally, perspectives for future engineering approaches are proposed to improve β-carotene production.

Graphical abstract

Keywords:

• β-Carotene
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae
• Yarrowia lipolytica
• metabolic engineering
• microbial cell factories

Author contributions

GQ, STQ and YC provided the idea. GQ, LYW, STQ, PQQ and YC wrote the manuscript. STQ, LYW, YF and WYT revised the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [2021YFC2104300], Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [BK20210573] and Tianjin Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Capacity Improvement Project TSBICIP-PTJS-003-04.