Evolutionary engineering reveals amino acid substitutions in Ato2 and Ato3 that allow improved growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on lactic acid

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the complete set of proteins involved in transport of lactic acid across the cell membrane has not been determined. In this study, we aimed to identify transport proteins not previously described to be involved in lactic acid transport via a combination of directed evolution, whole-genome resequencing and reverse...

Adaptive Laboratory Evolution and Reverse Engineering of Single-Vitamin Prototrophies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Quantitative physiological studies on Saccharomyces cerevisiae commonly use synthetic media (SM) that contain a set of water-soluble growth factors that, based on their roles in human nutrition, are referred to as B vitamins. Previous work demonstrated that in S. cerevisiae CEN. PK113-7D, requirements for biotin were eliminated by laboratory...

Fermentation of glucose-xylose-arabinose mixtures by a synthetic consortium of single-sugar-fermenting Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains

D-Glucose, D-xylose and L-arabinose are major sugars in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. This study explores fermentation of glucose-xylose-arabinose mixtures by a consortium of three ‘specialist’ Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. A D-glucose- and L-arabinose-tolerant xylose specialist was constructed by eliminating hexose phosphorylation in an...

Reverse engineering of industrially relevant phenotypes in yeast: An integrated approach

Reverse engineering is the study of discovering the structure, function and operation of a device or system with the express aim to reconstruct its key functionalities. This principle is applied to many disciplines, from military, through computer engineering, to health, but also in metabolic engineering. In this context, reverse metabolic...

Genome-scale analyses of butanol tolerance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveal an essential role of protein degradation

Background n-Butanol and isobutanol produced from biomass-derived sugars are promising renewable transport fuels and solvents. Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been engineered for butanol production, but its high butanol sensitivity poses an upper limit to product titers that can be reached by further pathway engineering. A better understanding of...

Engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the production of fuel ethanol from xylose

For various reasons mankind is looking for alternatives for fossil fuels. One of these alternatives is ethanol made from plant biomass. However, the plant material when broken down by hydrolysis into its sugar monomers contains a significant amount of xylose, a 5-carbon-sugar or pentose. Contrary to the sugars with 6 carbon atoms (hexoses) wild...