A novel approach for the improvement of ethanol fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Fermentation properties under the control of multiple genes are difficult to alter with traditional methods in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Here, a novel genome engineering approach is developed to improve ethanol production in very high gravity fermentation with 300 g/L glucose as the carbon source. This strategy involved constructing aneuploid strains on the base of tetraploid cells. The tetraploid strain was constructed by using the plasmid YCplac33-GHK, which harbored the HO gene encoding the site-specific Ho endonucleases. The aneuploid strain, WT4-M, was selected and screened after the tetraploid cells were treated with methyl benzimidazole-2-yl-carbamate to induce loss of mitotic chromosomes. It was found that aneuploid strain WT4-M not only exhibited an increase in ethanol production and osmotic and thermal tolerance, but also an improvement in the sugar-ethanol conversion rate. Notably, WT4-M provided up to 9.8% improvement in ethanol production compared with the control strain. The results demonstrated that the strategy of aneuploidy was valuable for creating yeast strains with better fermentation characteristics.