Abstract

The lipids of oleaginous yeasts (Single cell oil; SCO) represent a renewable oil feedstock with potential applications in nutritional food, biofuel and oleochemical industry. The exploration of the natural biodiversity is a promising strategy to identify novel oleaginous yeast species. With an important role played in natural wood decay in Valdivian rainforest of Southern Chile, three yeast strains were isolated and identified as Scheffersomyces coipomensis (KX609756), Sugiyamaella paludigena (KX609757) and Meyerozyma guilliermondii (KX609758) by ITS sequencing. The yeast strains were evaluated with respect to oleaginicity, biomass production, lipid content, lipid yield and fatty acid profile using glucose, xylose and mannose as substrates in order to investigate their potential for fuel and oleochemical production.