Adaptation of S. cerevisiae to fermentative conditions

The capacity of respiring cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to instantaneously switch to fast alcoholic fermentation upon a transfer to anaerobic sugar-excess conditions is a key characteristic of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in many of its industrial applications. This transition was studied by exposing aerobic glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at a low specific growth rate to two simultaneous perturbations: oxygen depletion and relief of glucose limitation. This shift towards fully fermentative conditions caused a massive transcriptional response, where one third of all genes within the genome were transcribed differentially. During the first 30 min, most of these changes were driven by relief from glucose limitation. An anaerobic induction response was only observed after the initial response to glucose excess. By comparing this study with public datasets representing dynamic and steady conditions, 14 up-regulated and 11 down-regulated genes were determined to be anaerobiosis specific and can therefore be use as “signature” transcripts for anaerobicity under dynamic as well as under steady state conditions Keywords: global transcriptional time-dependent profile To invoke rapid and full induction of fermentative capacity, respiratory, aerobic glucose-limited chemostat cultures (D=0.1•h-1) were shifted to fully fermentative conditions by sudden depletion of oxygen and addition of glucose. The glucose was added two min after sparging the continuous culture with pure nitrogen, when the dissolved oxygen concentration had decreased from 75-80% to 10-15% of air saturation. Samples for micro-arrays were taken for each time point after the perturbation (5, 10, 30, 60 and 120 min) from two independently cultured replicates, while steady state data were taken from three independent chemostats. The complete dataset therefore comprised 13 samples.