Yeasts make tailor-made fatty acids and oils

Wageningen Food & Biobased Research conducts a substantial amount of research into the possibilities of yeasts to make fatty acids and oils. One of the organisms with which the researchers often work is efficiently making a microbial oil that resembles sunflower oil or palm oil. In this project, the researchers will use biological technologies to customise the fatty acids that make up the oil. By slightly altering the biosynthesis of these acids, longer or shorter fatty acids or fatty acids with many unsaturated compounds, the so-called PUFAs, can be created.

Yeasts on organic waste

"The industry is eager for fully-fledged alternatives to fatty acids from oil and palm oil," says Jeroen Hugenholtz, business development manager at Wageningen University & Research. Both fossil fatty acids and fatty acids from palm oil are not produced sustainably. We are tinkering with processes to grow yeasts on organic waste and then extract the oil from these yeasts. A major advantage is that the oil fraction in yeasts is much higher than, for example, in palm. We use the remaining microbial mass, for example, to extract valuable proteins.

Three companies

Three industrial companies are participating in the project. Diversey, a major global player in the cleaning and hygiene market, is looking for bio-based alternatives to fatty acids used in detergents. Seppic, a supplier of raw materials for cosmetics and coatings for example, is looking for other alternative fatty acids, with slightly different properties than the fatty acids needed by Diversey. Duynie, the third partner, would like to develop biobased ingredients for use in food products.

Universal platform for microbial fatty acids

"With this project, we want to discover how we can not only produce more microbial fatty acids, but also how we can change their composition to give them exactly the desired properties," says Hugenholtz. "We are focusing on the fatty acids that are of most interest to the participating companies. But our ambition goes further: we want to offer the industry a universal platform on which we develop microbial fatty acids 'to order'. For meat substitutes or chocolate, for example, or for bioplastic shampoos and sun block.”

Feasible business cases

Hugenholtz expects the project to deliver at least a number of viable business cases: "Ultimately, success is determined by scalability. We think we can show that large-scale production of microbial fatty acids is possible. And that we can develop the biobased fatty acids that the connected parties are waiting for".