Carotenoids are pigmented antioxidants of exceptional importance to the food and pharmaceutical industries, with an annual market exceeding EUR 2 billion. However, over 90% of carotenoids are still produced from petrochemical feedstocks, while existing biosynthetic platforms can synthesise only a handful of standard C₄₀ carotenoids. In line with the European Union’s green and digital transition objectives and the priorities of Croatia’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPOO), the CaroSPHERE project addresses this disparity by developing microbial cell factories based on the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the probiotic yeast S. boulardii, which will contribute to more sustainable fermentative production of both standard C₄₀ and rare C₅₀ carotenoids.
The multidisciplinary CaroSPHERE research team brings together experts in synthetic biology, biochemistry, metabolic engineering, fermentation processes, bioinformatics, and small-molecule analytics. They will deploy state-of-the-art genetic and analytical methods, along with advanced AI-based tools for high-throughput data analysis, to develop a new generation of eukaryotic microbial cell factories for carotenoid biosynthesis.