Adaptive Evolution for the Improvement of Ethanol Production During Alcoholic Fermentation with the Industrial Strains of Yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae

Abstract—Ethanol is one of the most important biotechnological compounds widely used in medicine, pharmacology, food and fuel, cosmetology, and other fields. The main method for ethanol production is alcoholic fermentation using baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae converts glucose into ethanol very efficiently: ethanol yield is more than 90% of the theoretical maximum. However, even a slight increase in ethanol yield in an industrial-scale alcoholic fermentation can produce an additional 100 million t of ethanol each year. In this study, the method of adaptive evolution was used to increase the production of ethanol with industrial S. cerevisiae strains: yeast cells were exposed to long-term cultivation on the medium with high concentrations of glucose and ethanol. Most of the adapted strains obtained were characterized by increased ethanol production during alcoholic fermentation in comparison with the original strains.