The fatty acid transport protein Fat1p is involved in the export of fatty acids from lipid bodies in Yarrowia lipolytica.

In order to live, cells need to import different molecules, such as sugars, amino acids or lipids, using transporters. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the ScFAT1 gene encodes the long-chain fatty acid transporter; however, the transport of fatty acids (FAs) in the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica has not yet been studied. In contrast to what has previously been found for ΔScfat1 strains, ΔYlfat1 yeast was still able to grow on substrates containing short-, medium- or long-chain FAs. We observed a notable difference in cell lipid content between wild-type (WT) and deletion mutant strains after 24 h of culture in minimal oleate medium: in the WT strain, lipids represented 24% of cell dry weight (CDW), while they accounted for 37% of CDW in the ΔYlfat1 strain. This result indicates that YlFat1p is not involved in cell lipid uptake. Moreover, we also observed that fatty acid remobilisation was decreased in the ΔYlfat1 strain and that fluorescence-tagged YlFat1p proteins localised to the interfaces between lipid bodies, which suggests that YlFat1p may play a role in the export of FAs from lipid bodies.