Evaluation of genetic transformability parameters of sucro-alcoholic budding yeast strains <i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i>

Abstract

The evaluation of the genetic transformability parameters of strains used in ethanol production industry such as cell viability, transformation efficiency and frequency of transformation are essential steps to identify which strains are the most adequate for breeding programs. This study aimed to evaluate the strains of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are more prone to genetic modification experiments, both those that are already used commercially, as well as strains isolated from distillery Japungú Agroindustrial S/A, where the standard strain MM10-2a was used as reference. All of them were subjected to transformation by chemical method (Liac/ssDNA/PEG) with the expression vector pNatCre. The results showed that the highest and lowest cell viability were found, respectively, in strains GDBMF1-1 (P18A) and GDB226-1 (P19). The strain that showed the highest transformation efficiency was GDB24 (P5) and the lowest efficiency was observed in strains GDB114-2 (P18) and GDB226-1 (P19). The highest frequency of transformation, most important factor to be considered, was observed in the strain GDB24 (P5) and the lowest in GDB116-3 (P4A). The data showed that the industrial strain most suitable for experiments of genetic modification is GDB24 (P5) and the most suitable commercial strain is the CAT1.