Fermentation of glucose-xylose-arabinose mixtures by a synthetic consortium of single-sugar-fermenting Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.

d-Glucose, d-xylose and l-arabinose are major sugars in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. This study explores fermentation of glucose-xylose-arabinose mixtures by a consortium of three 'specialist' Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. A d-glucose- and l-arabinose-tolerant xylose specialist was constructed by eliminating hexose phosphorylation in an engineered xylose-fermenting strain and subsequent laboratory evolution. A resulting strain anaerobically grew and fermented d-xylose in the presence of 20 g L-1 of d-glucose and l-arabinose. A synthetic consortium that additionally comprised a similarly obtained arabinose specialist and a pentose non-fermenting laboratory strain, rapidly and simultaneously converted d-glucose and l-arabinose in anaerobic batch cultures on three-sugar mixtures. However, performance of the xylose specialist was strongly impaired in these mixed cultures. After prolonged cultivation of the consortium on three-sugar mixtures, the time required for complete sugar conversion approached that of a previously constructed and evolved 'generalist' strain. In contrast to the generalist strain, whose fermentation kinetics deteriorated during prolonged repeated-batch cultivation on a mixture of 20 g L-1d-glucose, 10 g L-1d-xylose and 5 g L-1l-arabinose, the evolved consortium showed stable fermentation kinetics. Understanding the interactions between specialist strains is a key challenge in further exploring the applicability of this synthetic consortium approach for industrial fermentation of lignocellulosic hydrolysates.