George Aggelis, Professor, Head of the Unit of Microbiology, University of Patras, delivers a speech at forum on global high-end equipment manufacturing industry & biomedical cooperation conference of the 3rd World Emerging Industries Summit (WEIS 2015)

Biotechnological perspectives of Single Cell Oils and Industrial Applications

Prof George Aggelis

Unit of Microbiology

Division of Genetics, Cell Biology & Development Department of Biology

University of Patras, Greece

Oil bodies in yeast cells

(Yarrowia lipolytica)

Microbial lipids (SCOs), have been in the forefront of biotechnological products for many years.

SCO production cost is 3-5 times higher than that of the common plant oils, thus only the high-priced SCOs (i.e. those containing high amounts of PUFAs) could be economically produced.

SCO technology is a green technology

Agro-industrial residues and wastes of low or negative cost can be used as feedstock for SCO production.

Major fields of application

AA, EPA, DHA, DHGLA

and GLA are among the

PUFAs with commercial interest.

Micro-organisms that contain PUFAs are mainly micro-algae able to produce EPA and DHA (i.e. Nannochloropsis oculata, N. salina, Tetraselmis sp. etc.) and fungi that belong to the Zygomycetes (order Mucorales) (i.e. Mucor spp, Mortierella sp. etc.) that synthesize DHGLA, GLA and AA.

Besides the PUFA- containing

SCOs, the production of

cocoa butter substitutes (CBS)

had gained attention, because of the high price of cocoa butter.

Some yeast strains can produce SCOs with a similar composition to that of cocoa butter containing almost equal amounts of P, S, and O acids.

The major alternative fuels used today are bioethanol and biodiesel, the first being

 produced by alcoholic fermentation, and the second from plant oils.

The use of plant oils as fuels has many drawbacks and many researchers have turned to microbial oils as alternatives.

The SCO production, however, is still too expensive to be economically used as biodiesel.