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Growth of the yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus CBS 6556 on different sugar combinations as sole carbon and energy source

  • Applied microbial and cell physiology
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Abstract

The yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus has been pointed out as a promising microorganism for a variety of industrial bioprocesses. Although genetic tools have been developed for this yeast and different potential applications have been investigated, quantitative physiological studies have rarely been reported. Here, we report and discuss the growth, substrate consumption, metabolite formation, and respiratory parameters of K. marxianus CBS 6556 during aerobic batch bioreactor cultivations, using a defined medium with different sugars as sole carbon and energy source, at 30 and 37 °C. Cultivations were carried out both on single sugars and on binary sugar mixtures. Carbon balances closed within 95 to 101 % in all experiments. Biomass and CO2 were the main products of cell metabolism, whereas by-products were always present in very low proportion (<3 % of the carbon consumed), as long as full aerobiosis was guaranteed. On all sugars tested as sole carbon and energy source (glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose, and galactose), the maximum specific growth rate remained between 0.39 and 0.49 h−1, except for galactose at 37 °C, which only supported growth at 0.31 h−1. Different growth behaviors were observed on the binary sugar mixtures investigated (glucose and lactose, glucose and galactose, lactose and galactose, glucose and fructose, galactose and fructose, fructose and lactose), and the observations were in agreement with previously published data on the sugar transport systems in K. marxianus. We conclude that K. marxianus CBS 6556 does not present any special nutritional requirements; grows well in the range of 30 to 37 °C on different sugars; is capable of growing on sugar mixtures in a shorter period of time than Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is interesting from an industrial point of view; and deviates tiny amounts of carbon towards metabolite formation, as long as full aerobiosis is maintained.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financed by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, São Paulo, Brazil). We would also like to thank Prof. Marcos Morais Jr for providing us the strain used throughout this work.

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  1. Gustavo Graciano Fonseca

    Present address: Laboratory of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Federal University of Grande Dourados, Dourados, MS, Brazil

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  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of São Paulo, PO Box 61548, CEP 05424-970, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

    Gustavo Graciano Fonseca, Nuno Miguel Barbosa de Carvalho & Andreas Karoly Gombert

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Fonseca, G.G., de Carvalho, N.M.B. & Gombert, A.K. Growth of the yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus CBS 6556 on different sugar combinations as sole carbon and energy source. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 97, 5055–5067 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-013-4748-6

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