Engineering of sugar transporters for improvement of xylose utilization during high-temperature alcoholic fermentation in Ogataea polymorpha yeast

BACKGROUND: Xylose transport is one of the bottlenecks in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol. Xylose consumption by the wild-type strains of xylose-utilizing yeasts occurs once glucose is depleted resulting in a long fermentation process and overall slow and incomplete conversion of sugars liberated from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Therefore, the engineering of endogenous transporters for the facilitation of glucose-xylose co-consumption is an important prerequisite for efficient ethanol production from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. RESULTS: In this study, several engineering approaches formerly used for the low-affinity glucose transporters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, were successfully applied for earlier identified transporter Hxt1 in Ogataea polymorpha to improve xylose consumption (engineering involved asparagine substitution to alanine at position 358 and replacement of N-terminal lysine residues predicted to be the target of ubiquitination for arginine residues). Moreover, the modified versions of S. cerevisiae Hxt7 and Gal2 transporters also led to improved xylose fermentation when expressed in O. polymorpha. CONCLUSIONS: The O. polymorpha strains with modified Hxt1 were characterized by simultaneous utilization of both glucose and xylose, in contrast to the wild-type and parental strain with elevated ethanol production from xylose. When the engineered Hxt1 transporter was introduced into constructed earlier advanced ethanol producer form xylose, the resulting strain showed further increase in ethanol accumulation during xylose fermentation. The overexpression of heterologous S. cerevisiae Gal2 had a less profound positive effects on sugars uptake rate, while overexpression of Hxt7 revealed the least impact on sugars consumption.