Sugar metabolism, redox balance and oxidative stress response in the respiratory yeast <it>Kluyveromyces lactis</it>

• Main Authors: Cerdán M Esperanza, Tarrío Nuria, García-Leiro Ana, González-Siso M Isabel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2009-08-01
• Series: Microbial Cell Factories
• Online Access: http://www.microbialcellfactories.com/content/8/1/46

<p>Abstract</p> <p>A lot of studies have been carried out on <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</it>, an yeast with a predominant fermentative metabolism under aerobic conditions, which allows exploring the complex response induced by oxidative stress. <it>S. cerevisiae </it>is considered a eukaryote model for these studies. We propose <it>Kluyveromyces lactis </it>as a good alternative model to analyse variants in the oxidative stress response, since the respiratory metabolism in this yeast is predominant under aerobic conditions and it shows other important differences with <it>S. cerevisiae </it>in catabolic repression and carbohydrate utilization. The knowledge of oxidative stress response in <it>K. lactis </it>is still a developing field. In this article, we summarize the state of the art derived from experimental approaches and we provide a global vision on the characteristics of the putative <it>K. lactis </it>components of the oxidative stress response pathway, inferred from their sequence homology with the <it>S. cerevisiae </it>counterparts. Since <it>K. lactis </it>is also a well-established alternative host for industrial production of native enzymes and heterologous proteins, relevant differences in the oxidative stress response pathway and their potential in biotechnological uses of this yeast are also reviewed.</p>