Transforming Candida hispaniensis , a promising oleaginous and flavogenic yeast
Résumé
Candida hispaniensis is an oleaginous yeast with a great potential for production ofsingle cell oil according to its naturally high lipid accumulation capacity. Its unusualsmall genome size trait is also attractive for fundamental research on genome evolu-tion. Our physiological study suggests a great potential for lipid production, reaching224 mg/g of cell dry weight in glucose minimum medium. C. hispaniensis is also ableto secrete up to 34.6 mg/L of riboflavin promising further riboflavin productionimprovements by cultivation optimization and genetic engineering. However, whileits genome sequence has been released very recently, no genetic tools have beendescribed up to now for this yeast limiting its use for fundamental research and forexploitation in an industrial biotechnology. We report here the first genetic modifica-tion of C. hispaniensis by introducing a heterologous invertase allowing the growth onsucrose using a biolistic transformation approach using a dedicated vector.The first genetic tool and transformation method developed here appear as a proofof concept, and while it would benefit from further optimization, heterogeneousexpression of invertase allows for metabolism of an additional sugar and shows het-erologous enzyme production capacity.