High-affinity transport, cyanide-resistant respiration, and ethanol production under aerobiosis underlying efficient high glycerol consumption by Wickerhamomyces anomalus

Abstract

Wickerhamomyces anomalus strain LBCM1105 was originally isolated from the wort of cachaça (the Brazilian fermented sugarcane juice-derived Brazilian spirit) and has been shown to grow exceptionally well at high amounts of glycerol. This paramount residue from the biodiesel industry is a promising cheap carbon source for yeast biotechnology. The assessment of the physiological traits underlying the W. anomalus glycerol consumption ability in opposition to Saccharomyces cerevisiae is presented. A new WaStl1 concentrative glycerol-H+ symporter with twice the affinity of S. cerevisiae was identified. As in this yeast, WaSTL1 is repressed by glucose and derepressed/induced by glycerol but much more highly expressed. Moreover, LBCM1105 aerobically growing on glycerol was found to produce ethanol, providing a redox escape to compensate the redox imbalance at the level of cyanide-resistant respiration (CRR) and glycerol 3P shuttle. This work is critical for understanding the utilization of glycerol by non-Saccharomyces yeasts being indispensable to consider their industrial application feeding on biodiesel residue.

Draft genome sequence of Wickerhamomyces anomalus LBCM1105, isolated from cachaça fermentation

“…Homologous sequences to the proteins were found (Table 2), in some cases different S. cerevisiae proteins aligned to the same protein in the W. anomalus LBCM1105 genome, it is not clear which will be the exact function of the LBCM1105's protein, more studies are need to elucidate this. The W. anomalus Stl1p was previously studied in detail, showing very high affinity for glycerol (Cunha et al, 2019). The genome sequence presented here provides evidence for the existence of the genes needed to ensure the two glycerol consumption and production pathways known in S. cerevisiae.…”

“…Wickerhamomyces anomalus (synonyms Pichia anomala, Hansenula anomala and Candida pelliculosa) are found in several diverse natural habitats, frequently associated with spoilage or processing of food and grain products (Passoth et al, 2006). Different strains of W. anomalus were reported (i) to be able to grow on a wide variety of conditions, including different carbon and nitrogen sources (Conceição et al, 2015;Cunha et al, 2019), at both low and high pH (2.0 to 12.4) and from 3 to 37 ºC (Fredlund et al, 2002), (ii) to be highly tolerant to different stress conditions, like osmotic stress (salt), high concentrations of ethanol, and the presence of heavy metals, and (iii) to produce ethanol from glucose, sucrose or xylose. W. anomalus strains have also been reported to display constitutive cyanide-resistant alternative oxidase (Cunha et al, 2019).…”

“…Different strains of W. anomalus were reported (i) to be able to grow on a wide variety of conditions, including different carbon and nitrogen sources (Conceição et al, 2015;Cunha et al, 2019), at both low and high pH (2.0 to 12.4) and from 3 to 37 ºC (Fredlund et al, 2002), (ii) to be highly tolerant to different stress conditions, like osmotic stress (salt), high concentrations of ethanol, and the presence of heavy metals, and (iii) to produce ethanol from glucose, sucrose or xylose. W. anomalus strains have also been reported to display constitutive cyanide-resistant alternative oxidase (Cunha et al, 2019). W. anomalus has been used as a cell factory for the production, among others, of enzymes (Díaz-Rincón et al, 2017), biosurfactants (Teixeira Souza et al, 2018) and fermented-beverages (Aplin et al, 2019).…”

TaLBD1, a LOB Transcription Factor Gene In T. Aestivum, Improves Plant N Starvation Adaptation Via Modulating N Acquisition-Associated Processes

“…Together, our ndings suggest that TaLBD1 acts as an essential regulator in mediating the plant N starvation response.. Plant low-N stress tolerance is largely dependent on the capacity of N uptake of plants challenged with NS condition. It has been clearly documented that nitrate transporter (NRT) system consisting of members of the high-a nity transport (HAT) exerts crucial role in regulating N accumulation in Ndeprived plants (Remans et al 2006;Da et al 2019). Characterization on HAT system has revealed that members of the RT2 group act as critical components, which contribute to the N acquisition capacity of plants under low-N conditions (Wang et al 2020).…”

Insights into the glycerol transport of Yarrowia lipolytica

“…Transporters of the MFS mediate the transport of solutes in response to chemiosmotic ion gradients (Pao et al, 1998), whereupon Sc Stl1p was shown to be an active symporter of glycerol and H + (Ferreira et al, 2005). Based on sequence similarities to Sc Stl1p, glycerol transporters were identified and functionally characterized in several other yeasts, such as Candida albicans (Kayingo et al, 2009), Zygosaccharomyces rouxii (Dušková et al, 2015), Candida glycerinogenes (Ji et al, 2018), Wickerhamomyces anomalus (da Cunha et al, 2019) and Kluyveromyces marxianus (Zhang et al, 2020).…”