MINI REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Synthetic Biology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2025.1673169
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing microbial and bioprocess engineering for innovative food and pharmaceutical solutionsView all articles
Yarrowia lipolytica as a Promising Cell Factory for Microbial Production of Value-added Nutraceuticals
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Bio-based Chemistry, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Ulsan, Republic of Korea
- 2Department of Bio-Health Convergence, Department of Biotechnology, Duksung Women's University, Dobong-gu, Republic of Korea
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The oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica has emerged as a powerful chassis for the sustainable production of high-value nutraceuticals. Its innate metabolism, characterized by a high flux towards the key precursor acetyl-CoA, makes it an ideal host for synthesizing complex molecules like carotenoids, flavonoids, and specialty lipids. This review summarizes recent progress in engineering Y. lipolytica cell factories, focusing on the synergistic application of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Key strategies discussed include enhancing precursor supply, redirecting metabolic flux away from competing pathways, and optimizing heterologous gene expression. We highlight the use of advanced tools like organelle compartmentalization to improve reaction efficiency and biosensor-driven screening to accelerate strain development. Furthermore, systems biology approaches utilizing multi-omics data are proving crucial for identifying novel engineering targets and overcoming metabolic bottlenecks. This review consolidates these advancements and discusses future perspectives for creating robust, industrially-relevant Y. lipolytica platforms for the bio-based economy.
Keywords: nutraceutical, yarrowia lipolytica, microbial cell factory, sphingolipid, terpenoid, Flavonoid
Received: 25 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lee, Lee, Park and Baek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Seung-Ho Baek, Center for Bio-based Chemistry, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Ulsan, Republic of Korea
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