Synthetic Lipidomics with Yeast 2.0 and SCRaMbLE

A scholarship award for Collier. The project aims to develop a pipeline for high lipid producing yeast strains. We are interested in developing lipidome neo-chromosomes in yeast and flow sorting protocols to identify lipid-rich strains of Saccharomyces sp. after SCRaMbLE, a yeast 2.0 mechanism for random strain development [1]. Specifically: 1) Clone plant, yeast, and algal lipid biosynthesis genes into SCRaMbLE ready vectors for in-vitro SCRaMbLE manipulation of the Saccharomyces lipidome. 2) Produce plant lipids within yeast by synthesizing a plant lipid neo chromosome. 3) CRISPR mediated knockout of lipases and bottlenecks to improve oil yield in Saccharomyces. 4) Apply the above processes to other Saccharomyces yeasts, including Yeast 2.0 and laboratory evolved strains obtained from collaborators.