Oil-lipids, carotenoids and fatty acids simultaneous production by rhodotorula mucilaginosa cct3892 using sugarcane molasses as carbon source

Abstract

One of the most important classes of nutritional biomolecules is the oleaginous compounds group, which specially includes the oil-lipids, the carotenoids and the fatty acids. These biocompounds present a wide range of industrial applications because their ability to act as an energy source, antioxidants and metabolic agents for the human body. Therefore, the food industry, mainly focusing on food supplementation, is always searching for new sources of them. In this context, the present study evaluated the total lipids, carotenoids and fatty acids simultaneous production by the Rhodotorula mucilaginosa CCT3892 yeast, using residual sugarcane molasses as carbon source. The results obtained demonstrated that the cultivation of yeast in molasses medium (MC) produced the same content of total lipids and carotenoids (16.50% ± 0.68% and 0.053 ± 0.001 mg g-1, respectively) as the obtained from a synthetic medium (SC) (15.36% ± 1.36% and 0.051 ± 0.001 mg g-1 0.005). Concerning the fatty acids biosynthesis, the MC cultivation generated the most interesting profile once it presented a greater content of oleic acid (74.05%), an unsaturated compound with high nutritional value. The cultivation carried out with the molasses and yeast extract supplementation (MYEC) did not provide an improvement in microbial oil production, what indicated that in this condition there was a predominance of others sorts of substrate metabolization by the yeast cells, as confirmed by the microbial kinetics study.