High-yield astaxanthin production process development and scale-up validation from wild-type Phaffia rhodozyma via...

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Microbial Fermentation
• Natural Product Synthesis

Background:

• Natural astaxanthin is a high-value carotenoid with significant health benefits.
• Current production methods often rely on genetic modification or have low yields.
• There is a need for efficient, non-genetically modified astaxanthin production strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an integrated strategy for enhancing astaxanthin production from wild-type Phaffia rhodozyma.
• To optimize fermentation conditions using traditional methods and intelligent modeling.
• To achieve commercial-scale astaxanthin yields without genetic modification.

Main Methods:

• Systematic optimization of fermentation parameters (temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen) in bioreactors.
• Scale-up of the optimized process from 500 mL to 5 L systems.
• Development and application of a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) intelligent model for predicting astaxanthin concentration.

Main Results:

• Optimal conditions yielded 387.32 mg/L astaxanthin in 500 mL bioreactors and 400.62 mg/L in 5 L systems.
• Achieved yields represent a 10- to 20-fold improvement over previous wild-type strain levels.
• The LSTM model demonstrated high predictive accuracy (R² = 0.978).

Conclusions:

• Commercial-scale production of natural astaxanthin is feasible using non-genetically modified approaches.
• The integrated strategy offers high productivity, safety, and regulatory advantages.
• This research provides an innovative solution with significant commercial potential for industrial astaxanthin production.