Improve carbon metabolic flux in Saccharomyces cerevisiae at high temperature by overexpressed TSL1 gene

This study describes a novel strategy to improve the glycolysis flux of Saccharomyces cerevisiae at high temperature. The TSL1 gene-encoding regulatory subunit of the trehalose synthase complex was overexpressed in S. cerevisiae Z-06, which increased levels of trehalose synthase activity in extracts, enhanced stress tolerance and glucose consuming rate of the yeast cells. As a consequence, the final ethanol concentration of 185.5 g/L was obtained at 38 °C for 36 h (with productivity up to 5.2 g/L/h) in 7-L fermentor, and the ethanol productivity was 92.7 % higher than that of the parent strain. The results presented here provide a novel way to enhance the carbon metabolic flux at high temperature, which will be available for the purposes of producing other primary metabolites of commercial interest using S. cerevisiae as a host.