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Updated: Jan 6, 2026

Genetic Engineering of an Unconventional Yeast for Renewable Biofuel and Biochemical Production
Published on: September 20, 2016
Free fatty acids promote transformation efficiency of yeast
Xingpeng Duan1, Xiaojing Ma1, Shengying Li2
1Division of Biotechnology, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian 116023, China.
Abstract:
High transformation efficiency is essential in genetic engineering for functional metabolic analysis and cell factory construction, in particular in construction of long biosynthetic pathways with multiple genes. Here, we found that free fatty acid (FFA)-overproducing strain showed higher transformation efficiency in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We then verified that external supplementation of FFAs, to the culture media for competent cell preparation, improved yeast transformation efficiency significantly. Among all tested FFAs, 0.5 g/L C16:0 FFA worked best on promoting transformation of S. cerevisiae and Komagataella phaffii (previously named as Pichia pastoris). Furthermore, C16:0 FFA improved the assembly efficiency of multiple DNA fragments into large plasmids and genome by 100%, which will facilitate the construction and optimization of multigene-containing long pathways.
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