Transcriptome Analysis Reveals a Promotion of Carotenoid Production by Copper Ions in Recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae

When using YPM media, the carotenoid yield was increased 10-fold compared to using the YPD media. To elucidate the hidden mechanism, the transcriptome analysis was performed and showed that 464 genes changed significantly in YPM media. Furthermore, inspired by the differential gene expression analysis which indicated that ADY2, HES1, and CUP1 showed the most remarkable changes, we found that the improvement of carotenoid accumulation in YPM media was mainly due to the copper, since supplementation of 80 µM CuSO4 in YPD media could increase carotenoid yield 9.2-fold