ABSTRACT
Vegetable oils are inexpensive, renewable feedstocks for industrial-scale fermentations to give value-added products with many food and nonfood uses. Vegetable oils generally have many saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in common [1], but castor oil is exceptional because of its unique, ready-made hyroxy fatty acid component that requires no chemical modification. Owing to its versatile usage in industry, ricinoleic [12hydroxy9(Z)-octadecenoic] acid, the major component of castor oil, has been studied extensively for production by genetically engineered plants [2,3]. Development of strategies for producing commercially useful levels of ricinoleate in transgenic soybeans is discussed by McKeon and Lin in Chapter 7. Alternatively, microbiological conversions of vegetable oils and their component fatty acids can provide new products with enhanced functionality and reactivity. These bioconversions are stereospecific and generate less undesirable by-products and residues and, so, have become a major focus of our research effort [4]. This chapter reviews the production and potential uses of monohydroxy, dihydroxy, and trihydroxy fatty acids, fatty amides, wax esters, sphingolipids, furans, and lactones, as well as other ancillary products resulting from microbiological conversions of vegetable oil and fatty acids.
