The lipid extraction from the microbial biomass is a tedious and high cost dependent process. In the present study, detergent assisted lipids extraction from the culture of the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica SKY-7 was carried out. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to investigate the effect of three principle parameters (N-LS concentration, time and temperature) on microbial lipid extraction efficiency % (w/w). The results obtained by statistical analysis showed that the quadratic model fits in all cases. Maximum lipid recovery of 95.3 +/- 0.3% w/w was obtained at the optimum level of process variables [N-LS concentration 24.42 mg (equal to 48 mg N-LS/g dry biomass), treatment time 8.8 min and reaction temperature 30.2 degrees C]. Whereas the conventional chloroform and methanol extraction to achieve total lipid recovery required 12 h at 60 degrees C. The study confirmed that oleaginous yeast biomass treatment with N-lauroyl sarcosine would be a promising approach for industrial scale microbial lipid recovery. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.