New workflow tracks lipid changes in oil-producing yeast species

A research team led by Profs. XU Guowang and LIU Xinyu from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with researchers from Dalian University of Technology, has developed a high-coverage lipidomics workflow and integrated it with transcriptomics to investigate lipid accumulation and compositional changes in Rhodosporidium toruloides under nitrogen limitation.

The study was recently published in Food Chemistry.

Microbial oils are promising sustainable lipid sources for food and biofuel applications. Although R. toruloides can accumulate substantial amounts of oil, previous studies have focused mainly on total lipid production and overall fatty acid composition, leaving changes in individual lipid species across cultivation stages poorly characterized.

To address this gap, the team established a liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry-based lipidomics workflow that combines quantitative structure–retention relationship modeling with complementary mass-spectral database matching. This approach enabled the identification and quantification of 1,206 lipid species across 26 subclasses, providing detailed coverage of both storage and structural lipids.

Using this workflow, the researchers identified two distinct stages of lipid production under nitrogen limitation. Triacylglycerols (TAGs) accumulated rapidly, peaking at 144 hours. During subsequent cultivation, major TAG and diacylglycerol species declined, while polyunsaturated lipids became relatively enriched.

Compared with common edible oils, the microbial oil produced between 48 and 168 hours showed some compositional similarities to palm oil. At 216 hours, the oil contained a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids, indicating a distinct fatty acid profile with potential nutritional relevance. These findings suggest that cultivation time could help tailor both oil yield and composition.

This study provides a basis for evaluating microbial oil composition and exploring tailored production strategies.