Study of the expression of genes in cocoa mediated by yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae), to improve the production of cocoa butter

Cocoa butter can be used as a raw material in the production of chocolates, cosmetics, fuels, among other products. This has generated an increase in the demand for MC, in such a way that it triggered a shortage of manufactured products due to their insufficiency. Numerous studies have been carried out in relation to CM, where several non-oleaginous and oleaginous yeast strains were analyzed under nitrogen-limited culture conditions. For the extraction of the different strains, they used non-oleaginous and oleaginous S. cerevisiae, which were subjected to analyzes, in which the great potential of this yeast could be determined. Currently, synthetic biotechnology, metabolic engineering and genetic engineering have allowed the production of a high level of triacylglycerols (TAG) equivalent to MC, by means of fermenting microorganisms such as yeast. This, in order to measure the production capacity of lipids similar to butter in the biosynthesis of TAGs. Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces TAGs as storage lipids, which consist of C16 and C18 fatty acids. However, cocoa butter-like lipids (CBL, which are made up of POP, POS, and SOS) are not among the main forms of TAG in yeast. However, Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strains have been designed with a modified synthesis of fatty acids. By expressing the selected cocoa genes in S. cerevisiae by molecular transformation, the total fatty acid production of TAG and CBL was successfully increased.