Climate change and increasing supply chain insecurities drive the food-, chemical, and pharmaceutical sectors to implement molecular efficient and waste-minimised bioprocess solutions, mostly deploying process-tailored microbial biocatalysts.

I will elaborate on our research achievements with the non-conventional, natural yeast Cutaneotrichosporon oleaginosus to generate sustainable products that can substitute vegetable oil-derived performance ingredients in the food and pharmaceutical sector, which are associated with significantly negative ecological impacts due to land use change. Notably, we have recently developed a co-fermentation protocol that enables >80% (w/w) tri-glyceride lipid production within 3-5 days at very high cell densities, along with protocols for enzymatic lipid release in the absence of organic solvents.

The second part of the talk will be dedicated to the structure-function relationships of the enigmatic diterpene synthase enzyme family, a valuable source of new and chemically complex carbon macrocycles. To reveal the enzymatic mechanisms, we increasingly employ computational simulation and AI-based prediction to guide our genetic engineering efforts, aiming at the creation of metabolically streamlined microbial production systems. The talk will review over a decade of research aimed at establishing both natural and genetically tailored microbial processes as a robust and economically feasible pillar of a circular bioeconomy.