We previously isolated 18 Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains from coconut toddy in Sri Lanka. All the 18 strains (SLY-1 to SLY-18) could grow aerobically up to 18 mmol L À1 vanillin in yeast extract-peptone-dextrose (YPD) medium, and the SLY-10 strain showed the highest vanillin tolerance (up to 21 mmol L À1 ). Among these 18 strains, even in the presence of 24 mmol L À1 vanillin, five strains (SLY-3, SLY-4, SLY-8, SLY-9 and SLY-10) produced alcohol at 72 h in the range of 11.4-33.1 g L À1 and the SLY-10 strain showed highest alcohol production. The five strains showed the conversion of vanillin to vanillyl alcohol. They also tolerated other strong inhibitors: 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (24 mmol L À1 ), furfural (30 mmol L À1 ), 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde (5-HMF, 36 mmol L À1 ) and acetic acid (75 mmol L À1 ). All these five strains showed no growth and no alcohol production when cultured in the medium with inhibitor mixture of 2.7 mmol L À1 vanillin, 30 mmol L À1 furfural, 30 mmol L À1 5-HMF, 75 mmol L À1 acetic acid and 75 mmol L À1 formic acid but showed significant growth and alcohol production of 16.2-32.7 g L À1 with inhibitor mixture of 30% concentration (0.81 mmol L À1 vanillin, 9 mmol L À1 furfural, 9 mmol L À1 5-HMF, 22.5 mmol L À1 acetic acid and 22.5 mmol L À1 formic acid). The four strains (SLY-3, SLY-4, SLY-8 and SLY-9) were shown to tolerate the inhibitor mixture to a similar extent and better than SLY-10, while SLY-10 was the best to vanillin alone.
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