Directed-engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for xylose utilization

A key to the commercial viability of cellulosic fuels and chemicals is a biocatalyst capable of utilizing all accessible carbohydrates.  The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae  is one of the more promising biocatalysts due to its robustness, ease of genetic manipulation, and long history of use in commercial ethanol production.  One major drawback to S. cerevisiae is its inability to utilize xylose and arabinose.   We have developed a xylose-utilizing technology that can be genetically engineered into a yeast strain to provide fast and complete xylose fermentation without the need for further strain adaptation.  This discrete xylose-technology package can be combined, as required for a specific commercial application, with other technology packages such as glycerol reduction, acetate conversion, arabinose-utilization or cellulase/hemicellulase secretion.