CellDisrupt – enzymatic yeast cell disruption

CellDisrupt is an enzyme technology to open yeast cells and thus contribute to a broader application of microbially produced oils for food, feed and fuel. The patentable CellDisrupt technology, currently developed to TRL 2, offers the possibility to lyse oil-producing yeast cells, with possible extension to fungi, with just a single enzyme produced by the yeast itself. The addition of a cheap chemical agent causes the yeast to produce a cell wall disrupting protein (CDP) to open the yeast cells and make the intracellularly accumulated oils more accessible and easier to extract from the biomass in downstream processing. Our innovation lies in using a specific enzyme to disrupt yeast cells from the inside of the cell instead of from the outside. This approach is based on an enzyme type that has not been used before. The idea is based on modifying oil-producing microorganisms to produce CDP when supplied with an external signal. This approach relieves the costs traditionally associated with separate enzyme production and the need for enzyme cocktails. This technology enables the single cell oil (SCO) industry to open yeast cells used in industrial production of SCO without the need to treat the yeast cells mechanically or chemically, meaning there is no need for high pressure or high temperatures. This could lead to lower capital and operating costs for the SCO industry, which is estimated to grow from $60 million in 2022 to over $600 million by 2032 and could grow faster if new, effective cell wall disrupting technologies become available.

This project's goal was an increased knowledge and competence on the CellDisrupt technology and potential as a sustainable industrial method to simplify production of high value intracellular chemicals. CellDisrupt has the potential to increase the production of of single cell oils (SCOs), which then has the potential to reduce our consumption of fossil and other non-sustainable sources of oils as SCOs represent an alternative to crude, plant, and fish oils. Our approach specifically targeted the cell disruption step and has the potential to open new avenues for SCO production and production of other intracellular compounds of interest by reducing the cost of biomass downstream processing. In this qualification project, we aimed to i) obtain market insight and identify stakeholders interested in the CellDisrupt technology, and ii) validate our observations with initial experiments in an industrially relevant oil producing yeast strain, moving our technology from TRL2 to TRL3. We were able to obtain insight into the market potential of the CellDisrupt technology and the need present in the market. We were able to establish the technology in an industrially relevant yeast, but we were unable to validate the CellDisrupt technology within the frame of this project. The project will continue with internal funding to further test the technology, aiming to move it to TRL3, before securing further funding.