Enzyme-based glucose delivery as a high content screening tool in yeast-based whole-cell biocatalysis

The influence of glucose release on growth and biotransformation of yeasts was examined by using the medium EnBase® Flo in shake flasks. The medium contains a polysaccharide acting as substrate, which is degraded to glucose by the addition of an enzyme. In the present paper, this medium was adapted for the cultivation of yeasts by increasing the complex components (booster) and the enzyme concentrations to guarantee a higher glucose release rate. Important changes were an increase of the complex component booster to 10-15% and an increased glucose release by increasing the enzyme content to 15 U L(-1). The 20 yeasts investigated in the present work showed an improvement of growth and biomass production when cultivated with the EnBase medium in comparison to yeast extract dextrose (YED) medium. Values of optical densities (OD(600)) of approximately 40 AU (corresponding to over 60 g L(-1) wet cell weight) were achieved for all 20 yeast strains tested. During the following screening of the yeasts in whole-cell biotransformation, an improvement of the conversion for 19 out of the 20 yeasts cultivated with the EnBase Flo medium could be observed. The biomass from the EnBase Flo cultivation showed a higher conversion activity in the reduction of 2-butanone to (R/S)-2-butanol. The enantioselectivity (ee) of 15 yeast strains showed an improvement by using the EnBase medium. The number of yeasts with an ee >97% increased from zero with YED to six with EnBase medium. Thus, the use of a glucose release cultivation strategy in the screening process for transformation approaches provides significant benefits compared to standard batch approaches.