Ethanol production from acid- and alkali-pretreated corncob by endoglucanase and β-glucosidase co-expressing Saccharomyces cerevisiae subject to the expression of heterologous genes and nutrition added.

Low-cost technologies to overcome the recalcitrance of cellulose are the key to widespread utilization of lignocellulosic biomass for ethanol production. Efficient enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose requires the synergism of various cellulases, and the ratios of each cellulase are required to be regulated to achieve the maximum hydrolysis. On the other hand, engineering of cellulolytic Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains is a promising strategy for lignocellulosic ethanol production. The expression of cellulase-encoding genes in yeast would affect the synergism of cellulases and thus the fermentation ability of strains with exogenous enzyme addition. However, such researches are rarely reported. In this study, ten endoglucanase and β-glucosidase co-expressing S. cerevisiae strains were constructed and evaluated by enzyme assay and fermentation performance measurement. The results showed that: (1) maximum ethanol titers of recombinant strains exhibited high variability in YPSC medium (20 g/l peptone, 10 g/l yeast extract, 100 g/l acid- and alkali-pretreated corncob) within 10 days. However, they had relatively little difference in USC medium (100 g/l acid- and alkali-pretreated corncob, 0.33 g/l urea, pH 5.0). (2) Strains 17# and 19#, with ratio (CMCase to β-glucosidase) of 7.04 ± 0.61 and 7.40 ± 0.71 respectively, had the highest fermentation performance in YPSC. However, strains 11# and 3# with the highest titers in USC medium had a higher ratio of CMCase to β-glucosidase, and CMCase activities. These results indicated that nutrition, enzyme activities and the ratio of heterologous enzymes had notable influence on the fermentation ability of cellulase-expressing yeast.