Elevated temperatures do not trigger a conserved metabolic network response among thermotolerant yeasts

BACKGROUND: Thermotolerance is a highly desirable trait of microbial cell factories and has been the focus of extensive research. Yeast usually tolerate only a narrow temperature range and just two species, Kluyveromyces marxianus and Ogataea polymorpha have been described to grow at reasonable rates above 40 °C. However, the complex mechanisms of thermotolerance in yeast impede its full comprehension and the rare physiological data at elevated temperatures has so far not been matched with corresponding metabolic analyses. RESULTS: To elaborate on the metabolic network response to increased fermentation temperatures of up to 49 °C, comprehensive physiological datasets of several Kluyveromyces and Ogataea strains were generated and used for (13)C-metabolic flux analyses. While the maximum growth temperature was very similar in all investigated strains, the metabolic network response to elevated temperatures was not conserved among the different species. In fact, metabolic flux distributions were remarkably irresponsive to increasing temperatures in O. polymorpha, while the K. marxianus strains exhibited extensive flux rerouting at elevated temperatures. CONCLUSIONS: While a clear mechanism of thermotolerance is not deducible from the fluxome level alone, the generated data can be valued as a knowledge repository for using temperature to modulate the metabolic activity towards engineering goals. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-019-1453-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.