[Transcript profile of converting xylose and glucose to ethanol by Candida shehatae]

We detected and analyzed transcript profile differences between hexose and pentose fermentation by Candida shehatae, a typical xylose fermenting yeast strain. On this basis, the encoding genes of key enzymes and functional protein were screened for discovering candidates of metabolism and regulation.

To discover the key genes of xylose metabolism and ethanol fermentation in Candida shehatae, we performed a new high throughout de novo transcriptome sequencing technology on Roche 454 GS FLX Titanium platform. Two cDNA libraries were constructed and sequenced for xylose and glucose fermentation for comparison of its expressed sequence tags differences.

Second sequencing run resulted in 600000 reads with the average length of 400bp for each cDNA library. We got 7250 and 7168 contigs by assembly, and annotated 2412 and 2456 unique genes by BLAST and Gene Ontology analysis for xylose and glucose respectively. By comparison, we identified 158 genes as different expression genes candidates at p < 0.05 for xylose metabolism and ethanol fermentation in Candida shehatae.

The group genes for xylose metabolism and ethanol fermentation in Candida shehatae was discovered by using transcript profile sequencing and comparison. It will provide fundamental data for the relative research on molecular biology and metabolic regulation.