Regulation and interaction between the morphological switch and the mannosylerythritol lipids (MEL) production in the yeast Pseudozyma aphidis DSM 70725.

This project aims to dig deeper into the molecular mechanisms involved in the induction of mannosylerythritol lipids (MEL) synthesis, with a specific focus on the relationship between the morphological switch of P. aphidis from single celled to filamentous growth, and MEL production. MELs are eco-friendly glycolipid biosurfactants with great potential for pharmaceutical, cosmetic, cleaning and many other applications. A major bottleneck for large-scale MEL production is the expensive downstream processing required to separate the crude MEL mixture. To solve this problem we intend to knock out one of the MEL biosynthesis genes