Yeast lipid technology for biomass refinery

<p indent="0mm">Lipids including vegetable oils are bulk commodities of strategic significance, but China has remained short of vegetable oils for years. It is unlikely to secure lipids resources via substantially increasing oil crops, as arable land in China is limited and must be used for growing grain crops. On the other hand, lignocellulosic biomass is a rich resource, which can be explored for lipid production via modern biotechnology. We developed a biorefinery concept that focuses on yeast lipid technology to convert biomass-derived sugars into lipids. To improve the techno-economics of this technology, it is important to address key issues including low substrate utilization rates, complicated processes and low lipid yields. Thus, our research covered all aspects related to yeast lipid technology, including biomass pretreatment, recovering biomass-derived sugars, engineering cell culture process, exploiting wastes therewith, deciphering the molecular bases of lipid accumulation in the oleaginous yeast <italic>Rhodotorula toruloides</italic>, and constructing advanced lipid producer. Here we will briefly review the history of yeast lipid technology, and recent progress in this area with a special focus on our own efforts, and then provide potential options to promote yeast lipid production at commercial scale.