Evaluating oleaginous yeasts for enhanced microbial lipid production using sweetwater as a sustainable feedstock.

Background: Yeasts exhibit promising potential for the microbial conversion of crude glycerol, owing to their versatility in delivering a wide range of value-added products, particularly lipids. Sweetwater, a methanol-free by-product of the fat splitting process, has emerged as a promising alternative feedstock for the microbial utilization of crude glycerol. To further optimize sweetwater utilization, we compared the growth and lipid production capabilities of 21 oleaginous yeast strains under different conditions with various glycerol concentrations, sweetwater types and pH.

Adaptive Laboratory Evolution of H16 for Carbon Co-Utilization with Glycerol.

H16 is a non-pathogenic Gram-negative betaproteobacterium that can utilize a broad range of renewable heterotrophic resources to produce chemicals ranging from polyhydroxybutyrate (biopolymer) to alcohols, alkanes, and alkenes. However, H16 utilizes carbon sources to different efficiency, for example its growth in glycerol is 11.4 times slower than a favorable substrate like gluconate.