Rhodosporidium toruloides APA 2687. Image by Morgann Reilly

Successful mating of R. toruloides. Brown teliospores are produced on MYP agar plates after mixing MAT A1 and MAT A2 haploids. Image by Jeffrey Skerker

Rhodosporidium toruloides is a nonpathogenic, red-colored basidiomycetous fungus. It is an oleaginous yeast that can accumulate lipids over 70% of its dry cell weight. Under low nitrogen growth conditions, it accumulates lipids and carotenoids.  In addition, it can serve as a new model system for understanding the genetic control of lipid productivity and for comparative studies with other oleaginous yeast, such as Yarrowia and Lipomyces spp.

The strain APA2687 (otherwise known as IFO0880) was obtained from NBRC culture collection. APA2687 is a single colony isolate (obtained from Arkin lab, UCB) of R. toruloides strain IFO0880 (now called NBRC 0880).