Establishment of l-arabinose fermentation in glucose/xylose co-fermenting recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae 424A(LNH-ST) by genetic engineering

Cost-effective and efficient ethanol production from lignocellulosic materials requires the fermentation of all sugars recovered from such materials including glucose, xylose, mannose, galactose, and l-arabinose. Wild-type strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae used in industrial ethanol production cannot ferment d-xylose and l-arabinose. Our genetically engineered recombinant S. cerevisiae yeast 424A(LNH-ST) has been made able to efficiently ferment xylose to ethanol, which was achieved by integrating multiple copies of three xylose-metabolizing genes. This study reports the efficient anaerobic fermentation of l-arabinose by the derivative of 424A(LNH-ST). The new strain was constructed by over-expression of two additional genes from fungi l-arabinose utilization pathways. The resulting new 424A(LNH-ST) strain exhibited production of ethanol from l-arabinose, and the yield was more than 40%. An efficient ethanol production, about 72.5% yield from five-sugar mixtures containing glucose, galactose, mannose, xylose, and arabinose was also achieved. This co-fermentation of five-sugar mixture is important and crucial for application in industrial economical ethanol production using lignocellulosic biomass as the feedstock.