Elucidating aromatic acid tolerance at low pH in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using adaptive laboratory evolution

Significance Understanding the tolerance mechanism to inhibiting chemicals can help in the design of more robust microbial strains for use in industrial bioprocesses. Aromatic acids are important bioactive molecules and precursors for many plant natural products. This study focused on analyzing Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutants tolerant to aromatic acids and revealed that regulating the transport of these compounds from the cytosol is the main mechanism to improve tolerance. Using this knowledge, the transport of aromatic acid can be fine tuned to improve the secretion of aromatic compounds and improve the robustness of yeast strains for industrial use.