Functional expression of Burkholderia cenocepacia xylose isomerase in yeast increases ethanol production from a glucose–xylose blend

Abstract

This study presents results regarding the successful cloning of the bacterial xylose isomerase gene (xylA) of Burkholderia cenocepacia and its functional expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The recombinant yeast showed to be competent to efficiently produce ethanol from both glucose and xylose, which are the main sugars in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. The heterologous expression of the gene xylA enabled a laboratorial yeast strain to ferment xylose anaerobically, improving ethanol production from a fermentation medium containing a glucose-xylose blend similar to that found in sugar cane bagasse hydrolysates. The insertion of xylA caused a 5-fold increase in xylose consumption, and over a 1.5-fold increase in ethanol production and yield, in comparison to that showed by the WT strain, in 24h fermentations, where it was not detected accumulation of xylitol. These findings are encouraging for further studies concerning the expression of B. cenocepacia xylA in an industrial yeast strain.

Metabolic engineering of yeasts by heterologous enzyme production for degradation of cellulose and hemicellulose from biomass: a perspective

“…To facilitate the incorporation of xylose utilization into CBP, efforts have focussed on introducing xylose metabolic pathways from other species into natural ethanologenic Saccharomyces sp. (Karhumaa et al, 2007; Matsushika et al, 2009a,b; Fernandes and Murray, 2010; Bera et al, 2011; Hasunuma et al, 2011; Hector et al, 2011; Usher et al, 2011; Xiong et al, 2011; Cai et al, 2012; Fujitomi et al, 2012; Kim et al, 2012; Tien-Yang et al, 2012; De Figueiredo Vilela et al, 2013; Demeke et al, 2013; Hector et al, 2013; Ismail et al, 2013; Kato et al, 2013; Kim et al, 2013). This topic has been reviewed recently (Matsushika et al, 2009a; Fernandes and Murray, 2010; Cai et al, 2012) and so will not be extensively covered here.…”

Novel transporters from Kluyveromyces marxianus and Pichia guilliermondii expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae enable growth on l‐arabinose and d‐xylose

“…The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae , a well known organism for industrial‐scale fermentations, is unable to utilize arabinose or xylose as a carbon source. Previous research to engineer S. cerevisiae to ferment arabinose or xylose to ethanol has included the expression of bacterial (Sedlak and Ho, ; Becker and Boles, ; Karhumaa et al ., ; Brat et al ., ; Wisselink et al ., ; de Figueiredo Vilela et al ., ; Wang et al ., ) or fungal (Richard et al ., ; Bettiga 2009; Bera et al ., ) pathways and enables S. cerevisiae to produce ethanol from arabinose or xylose.…”

Developments in bioethanol fuel-focused biorefineries

“…Successful results were not really obtained until a XI from the anaerobic fungus Piromyces was expressed in S. cerevisiae (Kuyper et al ., 2003(Kuyper et al ., , 2005. More recently also other useful XIs, from the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium phytofermentans (Brat et al ., 2009 ), the fungus Orpinomyces (Madhavan et al ., 2009 ), and from Burkholderia cenocepacia (de Figueiredo Vilela et al ., 2013 ), have been found and expressed in S. cerevisiae . In addition to the direct genetic engineering, i.e.…”