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Knychala, Marília

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  • Screening and Engineering Yeast Transporters to Improve Cellobiose Fermentation by Recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae
    Publication . Kretzer, Leonardo; Knychala, Marília; Silva, Lucca C.; Fontoura, Isadora C.C.; Leandro, Maria José; Fonseca, César; Verstrepen, Kevin J.; Stambuk, Boris
    ABSTRACT: Developing recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains capable of transporting and fermenting cellobiose directly is a promising strategy for second-generation ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass. In this study, we cloned and expressed in the S. cerevisiae CEN.PK2-1C strain an intracellular beta-glucosidase (SpBGL7) from Spathaspora passalidarum and co-expressed the cellobiose transporter SiHXT2.4 from Scheffersomyces illinoinensis, and two putative transporters, one from Candida tropicalis (CtCBT1 gene), and one from Meyerozyma guilliermondii (MgCBT2 gene). While all three transporters allowed cell growth on cellobiose, only the MgCBT2 permease allowed cellobiose fermentation, although cellobiose consumption was incomplete. The analysis of the beta-glucosidase and transport activities revealed that the cells stopped consuming cellobiose due to a drop in the transport activity. Since ubiquitinylation of lysine residues at the N- or C-terminal domains of the permease are involved in the endocytosis and degradation of sugar transporters, we constructed truncated versions of the permease lacking lysine residues at the C-terminal domain (MgCBT2 Delta C), and at both the C- and N-terminal domain (MgCBT2 Delta N Delta C) and co-expressed these permeases with the SpBGL7 beta-glucosidase in an industrial strain. While the strain harboring the MgCBT2 Delta C transporter continued to produce incomplete cellobiose fermentations as the wild-type MgCBT2 permease, the strain with the MgCBT2 Delta N Delta C permease was able to consume and ferment all the cellobiose present in the medium. Thus, our results highlight the importance of expressing cellobiose transporters lacking lysine at the N- and C-terminal domains for efficient cellobiose fermentation by recombinant S. cerevisiae.
  • Strategies for Efficient Expression of Heterologous Monosaccharide Transporters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
    Publication . Knychala, Marília; Santos, Angela A. dos; Kretzer, Leonardo; Gelsleichter, Fernanda; Leandro, Maria José; Fonseca, César; Stambuk, Boris
    ABSTRACT: In previous work, we developed a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain (DLG-K1) lacking the main monosaccharide transporters (hxt-null) and displaying high xylose reductase, xylitol dehydrogenase and xylulokinase activities. This strain proved to be a useful chassis strain to study new glucose/xylose transporters, as SsXUT1 from Scheffersomyces stipitis. Proteins with high amino acid sequence similarity (78-80%) to SsXUT1 were identified from Spathaspora passalidarum and Spathaspora arborariae genomes. The characterization of these putative transporter genes (SpXUT1 and SaXUT1, respectively) was performed in the same chassis strain. Surprisingly, the cloned genes could not restore the ability to grow in several monosaccharides tested (including glucose and xylose), but after being grown in maltose, the uptake of C-14-glucose and C-14-xylose was detected. While SsXUT1 lacks lysine residues with high ubiquitinylation potential in its N-terminal domain and displays only one in its C-terminal domain, both SpXUT1 and SaXUT1 transporters have several such residues in their C-terminal domains. A truncated version of SpXUT1 gene, deprived of the respective 3 '-end, was cloned in DLG-K1 and allowed growth and fermentation in glucose or xylose. In another approach, two arrestins known to be involved in the ubiquitinylation and endocytosis of sugar transporters (ROD1 and ROG3) were knocked out, but only the rog3 mutant allowed a significant improvement of growth and fermentation in glucose when either of the XUT permeases were expressed. Therefore, for the efficient heterologous expression of monosaccharide (e.g., glucose/xylose) transporters in S. cerevisiae, we propose either the removal of lysines involved in ubiquitinylation and endocytosis or the use of chassis strains hampered in the specific mechanism of membrane protein turnover.