Simultaneous determination of intracellular nucleotides and coenzymes in Yarrowia lipolytica producing lipid and lycopene by capillary zone electrophoresis

- An optimized method was established to separate nucleotides and coenzymes.
- NADP+ and ATP may be related to lycopene production in Y. lipolytica.
- The optimized method provides a useful approach for metabolic analysis.
- The optimized method paves a way for further improvement of Y. lipolytica.

Yarrowia lipolytica is an oleaginous yeast with promise in producing terpenoids such as lycopene. Though methods for analyzing primary metabolic intermediates have been established, further work is needed to better analyze nucleotides and coenzymes. Here, we presented an optimized method for the separation of nucleotides and coenzymes in Y. lipolytica using the capillary electrophoresis. The separation of twelve metabolites including four coenzymes, five nucleotides and three nucleosides was achieved within 32 min using a voltage of 15 kV and 70 mM sodium carbonate/hydrogencarbonate buffer with 1.0% β-CD at pH 10. The results show that the concentrations of adenosine triphosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate changed significantly between lycopene producing strain and the control, indicating that these two metabolites may be closely related with lycopene production. The optimized method provides a useful approach for future metabolic analysis of fermentation process as well as industrial strain improvement.