Involvement of ergosterol contents in the tolerance to vanillin in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The vanillin tolerance Saccharomyces cerevisiae was screened and compared intracellular ergosterol levels with several laboratory yeast strains, to study potential relationship between ergosterol contents and vanillin tolerance. S. cerevisiae NBRC1950 was selected as a vanillin tolerant strain. Its ergosterol contents were higher than those of laboratory strains. The results of DNA microarray and quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that 5 genes involved in ergosterol biosynthesis (ERG28, HMG1, MCR1, ERG5 and ERG7) were up-regulated in NBRC 1950 compared with strain X2180, suggested that high expressions of genes involved in ergosterol biosynthesis may cause for the high ergosterol content in strain NBRC 1950. S. cerevisiae HX strain, which was a high ergosterol content strain derived from X2180, became more tolerant to vanillin compared with the parental strain. It is suggested that high ergosterol contents may be in part responsible for vanillin tolerance. These findings provide a biotechnological basis for the molecular engineering of S. cerevisiae with increased tolerance to vanillin.

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Endo A, Nakamura T, Shima J