Mitochondrial and plasma‑membrane transport‑based engineering enables industrial‑level isocitric acid production in Yarrowia lipolytica
Eugenia Messina, Cosetta Ciliberti, Evgeniya Yuzbasheva, Serena Barile, Tigran Yuzbashev, Zbigniew Lazar, Ivan Laptev, Ferdinando Palmieri, Luigi Palmieri, Isabella Pisano, Gennaro Agrimi · 2026
Read Mitochondrial and plasma‑membrane transport‑based engineering enables industrial‑level isocitric acid production in Yarrowia lipolytica by Eugenia Messina, Cosetta Ciliberti, Evgeniya Yuzbasheva, Serena Barile, Tigran Yuzbashev, Zbigniew Lazar, Ivan Laptev, Ferdinando Palmieri, Luigi Palmieri, Isabella Pisano, Gennaro Agrimi (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13602682.txt.
Description
Messina and co-authors rewire yeast transport proteins to mass-produce isocitric acid, in a 2026 biotechnology study. The acid has growing value in nutrition and medicine, but no cheap, selective factory process exists. The yeast Yarrowia lipolytica shuttles citric and isocitric acids out of its mitochondria through specific carriers the team had identified. Their plan deletes the citric acid exporter and boosts the isocitric acid one.
Adding a membrane exporter at the cell surface raised output further. Extra import carriers feeding carbon into mitochondria were layered on top. The engineered strains reached industrial-level production with high selectivity between the two similar acids. The study shows transport, not just enzyme tuning, can decide what a cell factory secretes.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Eugenia Messina, Cosetta Ciliberti, Evgeniya Yuzbasheva, Serena Barile, Tigran Yuzbashev, Zbigniew Lazar, Ivan Laptev, Ferdinando Palmieri, Luigi Palmieri, Isabella Pisano, Gennaro Agrimi |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 60 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |