Abstract
Fatty acid biosynthesis in oleaginous fungi requires the supply of reducing power, NADPH, and the precursor of fatty acids, acetyl-CoA, which is generated in the cytosol being produced by ATP: citrate lyase which requires citrate to be, transported from the mitochondrion by the citrate/malate/pyruvate transporter. This transporter, which is within the mitochondrial membrane, transports cytosolic malate into the mitochondrion in exchange for mitochondrial citrate moving into the cytosol (Fig. 1). The role of malate transporter in lipid accumulation in oleaginous fungi is not fully understood, however. Therefore, the expression level of the mt gene, coding for a malate transporter, was manipulated in the oleaginous fungus Mucor circinelloides to analyze its effect on lipid accumulation. The results showed that mt overexpression increased the lipid content for about 70 % (from 13 to 22 % dry cell weight, CDW), whereas the lipid content in mt knockout mutant decreased about 27 % (from 13 to 9.5 % CDW) compared with the control strain. Furthermore, the extracellular malate concentration was decreased in the mt overexpressing strain and increased in the mt knockout strain compared with the wild-type strain. This work suggests that the malate transporter plays an important role in regulating lipid accumulation in oleaginous fungus M. circinelloides.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271812, 81071685, 21276108), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2012AA022105C), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1249), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents (NCET-13-0831), and the Strategic Merieux Research Grant. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Lina Zhao and José T. Cánovas-Márquez contributed equally to this work.
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Zhao, L., Cánovas-Márquez, J.T., Tang, X. et al. Role of malate transporter in lipid accumulation of oleaginous fungus Mucor circinelloides . Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 1297–1305 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-7079-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-7079-y