Genomic and transcriptomic analyses of the Chinese Maotai-flavored liquor yeast MT1 revealed its unique multi-carbon co-utilization

BACKGROUND: Revealing genetic mechanisms behind specific physiological characteristics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae from specific environments is important for industrial applications and requires precise understanding. RESULTS: Maotai strain MT1 was isolated from the complicated Chinese Maotai-flavored liquor-making environment with extremely high temperatures, and acidic and ethanol stresses. Compared with the type strain S288c, MT1 can tolerate high acidity (pH 2.0), high ethanol levels (16 %) and high temperatures (44 °C). In addition, MT1 can simultaneously utilize various sugars, including glucose, sucrose, galactose, maltose, melibiose, trehalose, raffinose and turanose. Genomic comparisons identified a distinct MT1 genome, 0.5 Mb smaller than that of S288c. There are 145 MT1-specific genes that are not in S288c, including MEL1, MAL63, KHR1, BIO1 and BIO6. A transcriptional comparison indicated that HXT5 and HXT13, which are theoretically repressed by glucose, were no longer inhibited in MT1 and were highly expressed even in a medium containing 70 g/L glucose. Thus, other sugars may be co-utilized with glucose by MT1 without diauxic growth. CONCLUSIONS: Based on a functional genomics analysis, we revealed the genetic basis and evolutionary mechanisms underlying the traits of the Chinese Maotai-flavored yeast MT1. This work provides new insights for the genetic breeding of yeast and also enriches the genetic resources of yeast. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-2263-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.