Development of Ethanol-Tolerant Yeasts through Genome Shuffling

Genome shuffling is a tool that can be used to enhance complex traits including ethanol tolerance that would increase Saccharomyces cerevisiae-mediated ethanol production. Kevin J. Verstrepen of Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics in Belgium and his team explored robot-assisted strategies to shuffle genomes of multiple parental yeasts.

Eight of the 318 different yeasts screened served as parents for the study. Two approaches were used for genome shuffling. In the first approach, strains were subjected to multiple consecutive rounds of random genome shuffling, yielding hybrids with increased ethanol tolerance. The second approach used several rounds of robot-assisted targeted genome shuffling. In both approaches, the F1 hybrids showed higher ethanol production than F3 hybrids. Of all the hybrids strains, eight exhibited superior fermentation performance than the commercial strain Ethanol Red.

This study presents the use of several genome shuffling strategies to obtain hybrids with increased ethanol tolerance and fermentation capacity. Several hybrids outperformed the bioethanol strain Ethanol Red, making them interesting candidate strains for industrial production.