An analysis of the transcriptome of Debaryomyces hansenii growing on media containing glucose, galactose or xylose as a carbon source

Abstract

Debaryomyces hansenii is one of the most extremophilic yeasts on the planet, which has not been studied extensively (compared to other yeast species like Saccharomyces cerevisiae) despite its enormous biotechnological potential. Indeed, of the many characteristics that make this yeast attractive from a biotechnology perspective, its ability to metabolize and ferment the five carbon sugar xylose is of particular interest in the development of second generation bioethanol. The genome of D. hansenii has recently been sequenced by the Genolevures Consortium, paving the way for research on uncovering genes that allow this yeast to exhibit its interesting characteristics. Previous work in our lab identified genes and pathways that allow D. hansenii to thrive in environments containing high amounts of salt. The main focus of this work was conducting transcriptome based study in order to understand the genes and pathways that allow this yeast to metabolize xylose. In this study, RNA sequencing and bioinformatics were conducted to determine the transcriptome of D. hansenii cells growing on different carbon substrates (glucose, galactose and xylose). The sequencing results revealed that over 1300 genes were statistically significantly (p

Date of Award	May 2017
Original language	American English