Differential importance of trehalose accumulation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in response to various environmental stresses

Trehalose is believed to play an important role in stress tolerance in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this research, the responses to various environmental stresses, such as high ethanol concentration, heat, oxidative, and freezing stresses, were investigated in a strain with deletion of the NTH1, NTH2, and ATH1 genes encoding trehalases that are involved in trehalose degradation and the triple deletion strains overexpressing TPS1 or TPS2, both of which encode trehalose biosynthesis enzymes in S. cerevisiae. The contents of trehalose constitutively accumulated in the TPS1- and TPS2-overexpressing triple deletion strains were higher than that in the original triple deletion strain. High trehalose accumulation and growth activity were observed in the TPS2-overexpressing triple deletion strain after ethanol stress induction. The same was also observed in the triple deletion and the TPS1- and TPS2-overexpressing triple deletion strains after heat stress induction. In case of freezing stress, all the recombinant strains with high constitutive trehalose content showed high tolerance. However, in case of oxidative stress, trehalose accumulation could not make the yeast cells tolerant. Our results indicated that high trehalose accumulation can make yeast cells resistant to multiple stresses, but the importance of this accumulation before or after stress induction is varied depending on the type of stress.