Mechanism of proanthocyanidins-induced alcoholic fermentation enhancement in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Our previous work revealed proanthocyanidins (PAs) could pose significant enhancement on the activity of H(+)-ATPase and fermentation efficiency after a transient initial inhibition (Li et al in Am J Enol Vitic 62(4):512-518, 2011). The aim of the present work was to understand the possible mechanism for this regulation. At Day 0.5 the gene expression level of PMA1 in AWRI R2 strain supplemented with 1.0 mg/mL PAs was decreased by around 54 % with a 50 % and a 56.5 % increase in the concentration of intracellular ATP and NADH/NAD(+) ratio, respectively, compared to that of control. After the transient adaptation, the gene expression levels of PMA1 and HXT7 in PAs-treated cells were enhanced significantly accompanied by the decrease of ATP contents and NADH/NAD(+) ratio, which resulted in the high level of the activities of rate-limiting enzymes. PAs could pose significant effects on the fermentation via glucose transport, the energy and redox homeostasis as well as the activities of rate-limiting enzymes in glycolysis.