Evolutionary engineering of Phaffia rhodozyma for astaxanthin-overproducing strain

Abstract

Evolutionary engineering is a novel whole-genome wide engineering strategy inspired by natural evolution for strain improvement. Astaxanthin has been widely used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and health care food due to its capability of quenching active oxygen. Strain improvement of Phaffia rhodozyma, one of the main sources for natural astaxanthin, is of commercial interest for astaxanthin production. In this study a selection procedure was developed for adaptive evolution of P. rhodozyma strains under endogenetic selective pressure induced by additive in environmental niches. Six agents, which can induce active oxygen in cells, were added to the culture medium respectively to produce selective pressure in process of evolution. The initial strain, P. rhodozyma AS2-1557, was mutagenized to acquire the initial strain population, which was then cultivated for 550 h at selective pressure and the culture was transferred every 48h. Finally, six evolved strains were selected after 150 generations of evolution. The evolved strains produced up to 48.2% more astaxanthin than the initial strain. Our procedure may provide a promising alternative for improvement of high-production strain.

Keywords

evolutionary engineering / astaxanthin / strain improvement

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973) (Grant No. 2007CB707802), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 20806055, 20875068).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg