Engineering a non-model yeast Rhodotorula mucilaginosa for terpenoids synthesis

Terpenoids have tremendous biological activities and are widely employed in food,healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.Using synthetic biology to product terpenoids from microbial cell factories presents a promising alternative route compared to conventional methods such as chemical synthesis or phytoextraction.The red yeast Rhodotorula mucilaginosa has been widely studied due to its natural production capacity of carotenoid and lipids,indicating a strong endogenous isoprene pathway with readily available metabolic intermediates.This study constructed several engineered strains of R.mucilaginosa with the aim of producing different terpenoids.Monoterpeneα-terpineol was produced by expressing theα-terpineol synthase from Vitis vinifera.The titer ofα-terpineol was further enhanced to 0.39 mg/L by overexpressing the endogenous rate-limiting gene of the MVA pathway.Overexpression ofα-farnesene synthase from Malus domestica,in combination with MVA pathway rate-limiting gene resulted in significant increase inα-farnesene production,reaching a titer of 822 mg/L.The carotenoid degradation productβ-ionone was produced at a titer of 0.87 mg/L by expressing theβ-ionone synthase from Petunia hybrida.This study demonstrates the potential of R.mucilaginosa as a platform host for the direct biosynthesis of various terpenoids and provides insights for further development of such platforms.

Molecularly engineered lignin to polyphenol via organocatalysis as an active sunscreen ingredient

Phenolation is one of the effective strategies to synthesize lignin-based polyphenols,improve lignin’s properties,and extend its value-added applications in biological,medicinal and cosmetic fields.Herein,by taking the structural feature advantage of lignin,an effective and green strategy was developed to molecularly engineer lignin into a robust lignin-3-(2-hydroxyphenyl)propionate ester(LPPE)derivative via a transesterification reaction between 3,4-dihydrocoumarin(DHC)and the aliphatic hydroxyls in lignin under organocatalysis.The strategy is optimized and the novel derivative was systematically characterized by ^(1)H,^(13)C and ^(31)P nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR)and Fourier transform infrared(FT-IR)spectroscopy.The findings indicated that the successful introduction of 3-(2-hydroxyphenyl)propionate groups using a OH groups/DHC/organic base mo-lar ratio of 1꞉1꞉0.3 at 120℃ for 6 h increased the content of phenolic hydroxyl groups from 1.7931 to 3.0179 mmol/g,and the LPPE exhibited excellent ultraviolet-absorbing and antioxidant per-formance with up to 90%free radical scavenging activity within 20 min using 5 mg/mL of LPPE.In addition,good biocompatibility and a high Sun protection factor(SPF)value of 40.9 were achieved at 5%(w)dosage of LPPE in the cream,indicating its significant application potential in sunscreen.