Production of β‐carotene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae through altering yeast lipid metabolism

Abstract Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a widely used cell factory for the production of fuels and chemicals. However, as a non‐oleaginous yeast, S. cerevisiae has a limited production capacity for lipophilic compounds, such as β‐carotene. To increase its accumulation of β‐carotene, we engineered different lipid metabolic pathways in a β‐carotene producing strain and investigated the relationship between lipid components and the accumulation of β‐carotene. We found that overexpression of sterol ester synthesis genes ARE1 and ARE2 increased β‐carotene yield by 1.5‐fold. Deletion of phosphatidate phosphatase (PAP) genes ( PAH1 , DPP1 , and LPP1 ) also increased β‐carotene yield by twofold. Combining these two strategies resulted in a 2.4‐fold improvement in β‐carotene production compared with the starting strain. These results demonstrated that regulating lipid metabolism pathways is important for β‐carotene accumulation in S. cerevisiae , and may also shed insights to the accumulation of other lipophilic compounds in yeast.