Accumulation of glycogen and trehalose in nutrient-limited cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is negatively correlated with the specific growth rate. Additionally, glucose-excess conditions (i.e., growth limitation by nutrients other than glucose) are often implicated in high-level accumulation of these storage carbohydrates. The present study investigates how the identity of the growth-limiting nutrient affects accumulation of storage carbohydrates in cultures grown at a fixed specific growth rate. In anaerobic chemostat cultures (dilution rate, 0.10 h ؊1 ) of S. cerevisiae, the identity of the growth-limiting nutrient (glucose, ammonia, sulfate, phosphate, or zinc) strongly affected storage carbohydrate accumulation. The glycogen contents of the biomass from glucoseand ammonia-limited cultures were 10-to 14-fold higher than those of the biomass from cultures grown under the other three glucose-excess regimens. Trehalose levels were specifically higher under nitrogen-limited conditions. These results demonstrate that storage carbohydrate accumulation in nutrient-limited cultures of S. cerevisiae is not a generic response to excess glucose but instead is strongly dependent on the identity of the growth-limiting nutrient. While transcriptome analysis of wild-type and msn2⌬ msn4⌬ strains confirmed that transcriptional upregulation of glycogen and trehalose biosynthesis genes is mediated by Msn2p/Msn4p, transcriptional regulation could not quantitatively account for the drastic changes in storage carbohydrate accumulation. The results of assays of glycogen synthase and glycogen phosphorylase activities supported involvement of posttranscriptional regulation. Consistent with the high glycogen levels in ammonia-limited cultures, the ratio of glycogen synthase to glycogen phosphorylase in these cultures was up to eightfold higher than the ratio in the other glucose-excess cultures.Glycogen and trehalose are the major storage carbohydrates in baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) (22). The ability to accumulate these storage carbohydrates is an important criterion for selection of industrial yeast strains because of their involvement in the cellular robustness and quality of yeast extracts (e.g., for food and feed applications) (8,16,61).Based on the observation that glycogen and trehalose accumulate in batch cultures of S. cerevisiae that are starved for carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, or phosphorus, Lillie and Pringle (41) proposed that storage carbohydrate synthesis is a general response to nutrient starvation. Parrou et al. (56), who studied carbohydrate metabolism during nutrient-limited growth rather than during nutrient starvation, found that accumulation of glycogen and trehalose occurred when growth was limited by the carbon or nitrogen source. Because these workers were unable to obtain sulfur-or phosphorus-limited growth with their experimental setup (56), it remained unclear whether accumulation of glycogen and trehalose is a common response to nutrient limitation or whether, instead, nutrient limitations ot...