Microbial biosynthesis of lycopene in yeast with a metabolicengineering approach

The microbial biosynthesis of valuable carotenoids, widely recognized for their antioxidant properties and applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries, offers a promising avenue for production. Particularly, lycopene production through microbial biosynthesis presents an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and sustainable option. This thesis aims to optimize metabolic pathways and engineering techniques to enhance lycopene production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Modules designed for lycopene production in S. cerevisiae were constructed with the crtI-crtE-crtB-idi genes obtained from the pAC-EHER-EBIidiYZ plasmid archived in the Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Engineering Laboratory of the Department of Bioengineering at Firat University. The effects of different strains (IMX581 and MT04) and module combinations on lycopene production were evaluated by measuring lycopene levels using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). At 96 hours, lycopene production was measured at 0.712 mg/L, while at 240 hours, lycopene production reached 0.750 mg/L as quantified by HPLC. This thesis contributes to advancing the understanding of yeast metabolism and bringing new perspectives to the industrial biotechnology field by combining metabolic engineering with synthetic biology.