Metabolome analysis and pathway abundance profiling of Yarrowia lipolytica cultivated on different carbon sources

Yarrowia lipolytica, a model microorganism of oleaginous yeasts with developed sophisticated genetic tools, is able to metabolize a wide range of substrates and accumulate large amounts of lipids. However, there is a lack of literature reporting the metabolic characteristics of Y. lipolytica metabolizing these substrates in a systematic view. In this study, Y. lipolytica was cultivated on a variety of carbon sources, among which cell growth and production characteristics on two representative substrates (glucose and oleic acid) were investigated in detail at metabolomic level. Metabolic pathway abundance was computed to interpret the metabolome data in a straightforward way. The results showed that most pathway abundances decreased in the shift from growth to production phase. Specifically, when cultivated on glucose, abundances of twelve pathways decreased markedly between the growth and lipid production phases, while thirteen pathways reduced and only three pathways increased significantly in abundances on oleic acid. In comparison, for the same cultivation phase only a few pathways exhibited significant changes between glucose-grown and oleic acid-grown cells. This study revealed that the pathway abundance could be used to effectively show the activity changes of pathways, providing a new perspective to employ metabolomics data for understanding cell metabolism and enhancing the production of target metabolites.