Division of labour enables Yarrowia lipolytica synthetic consortia to achieve higher growth rates from starch
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Atkinson, Eliza
Stan, Guy-Bart
Ledesma-Amaro, Rodrigo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Yarrowia lipolytica is a promising host for a range of biotechnological applications. However, the costs and sustainability of common feedstocks limit the commercial viability of current bioproduction. Consolidated bioprocessing using plant biomass offers a desirable alternative to reduce costs and improve sustainability, though such approaches are often constrained in single-organism systems due to metabolic burden. Here, we have investigated the use of division of labour (DOL) in Y. lipolytica consortia for the degradation of starch, a common component of plant biomass.
Results
We engineered a panel of strains expressing α-amylase and/or glucoamylase, with varying promoter and signal peptide combinations. We found that stronger expression led to higher metabolic burden, and that expressing both amylases imposed a greater burden than expressing either enzyme alone. When combining both amylase strains, we found that some consortia could achieve faster growth rates than the equivalent monoculture. The fastest growing consortium identified from the panel was scaled-up into flasks, where the consortium achieved the highest final biomass, although the fastest growth rate was achieved by the α-amylase strain alone.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that DOL is a promising strategy for degrading complex macromolecules in plant biomass, offering a potential route to more sustainable bioprocessing.
Yarrowia lipolytica is a promising host for a range of biotechnological applications. However, the costs and sustainability of common feedstocks limit the commercial viability of current bioproduction. Consolidated bioprocessing using plant biomass offers a desirable alternative to reduce costs and improve sustainability, though such approaches are often constrained in single-organism systems due to metabolic burden. Here, we have investigated the use of division of labour (DOL) in Y. lipolytica consortia for the degradation of starch, a common component of plant biomass.
Results
We engineered a panel of strains expressing α-amylase and/or glucoamylase, with varying promoter and signal peptide combinations. We found that stronger expression led to higher metabolic burden, and that expressing both amylases imposed a greater burden than expressing either enzyme alone. When combining both amylase strains, we found that some consortia could achieve faster growth rates than the equivalent monoculture. The fastest growing consortium identified from the panel was scaled-up into flasks, where the consortium achieved the highest final biomass, although the fastest growth rate was achieved by the α-amylase strain alone.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that DOL is a promising strategy for degrading complex macromolecules in plant biomass, offering a potential route to more sustainable bioprocessing.
Date Issued
2026-02-11
Date Acceptance
2025-12-07
Citation
Microbial Cell Factories, 2026, 25 (1)
ISSN
1475-2859
Publisher
BMC
Journal / Book Title
Microbial Cell Factories
Volume
25
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41673624
PII: 10.1186/s12934-025-02899-3
Subjects
Division of labour
Engineering biology
Metabolic engineering
Microbial consortia
Precision fermentation
Sustainable biotechnology
Synthetic biology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
73
Date Publish Online
2026-02-11