Modeling lipid accumulation in oleaginous fungi in chemostat cultures: I. Development and validation of a chemostat model for Umbelopsis isabellina

Lipid-accumulating fungi may be able to produce biodiesel precursors from agricultural wastes. As a first step in understanding and evaluating their potential, a mathematical model was developed to describe growth, lipid accumulation and substrate consumption of the oleaginous fungus Umbelopsis isabellina (also known as Mortierella isabellina) in submerged chemostat cultures. Key points of the model are: (1) if the C-source supply rate is limited, maintenance has a higher priority than growth, which has a higher priority than lipid production; (2) the maximum specific lipid production rate of the fungus is independent of the actual specific growth rate. Model parameters were obtained from chemostat cultures of U. isabellina grown on mineral media with glucose and NH₄ ⁺. The model describes the results of chemostat cultures well for D > 0.04 h⁻¹, but it has not been validated for lower dilution rates because of practical problems with the filamentous fungus. Further validation using literature data for oleaginous yeasts is described in part II of this paper. Our model shows that not only the C/N-ratio of the feed, but also the dilution rate highly influences the lipid yield in chemostat cultures.