Co‐metabolism of Na+/K+ ion regulated physiological enhancement on selenium‐accumulation in Saccharomyces yeasts

Abstract BACKGROUND Selenium is an important nutritional supplement that mainly exists naturally in soil as inorganic selenium. Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells are excellent medium for converting inorganic selenium in nature into organic selenium. RESULTS Under the co‐stimulation of sodium selenite (Na 2 SeO 3 ) and potassium selenite (K 2 SeO 3 ), the activity of selenophosphate synthetase (SPS) was improved up to about five folds more than conventional Na 2 SeO 3 group with the total selenite salts content of 30 mg/L. Transcriptome analysis first revealed that due to the sharing pathway between sodium ion (Na + ) and potassium ion (K + ), the K + largely regulates the metabolisms of amino acid and glutathione under the accumulation of selenite salt. Furthermore, K + could improve the tolerance performance and selenium‐biotransformation yields of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells under Na 2 SeO 3 salt stimulation. CONCLUSION The important role of K + in regulating the intracellular selenium accumulation especially in terms of amino acid metabolism and glutathione, suggested a new direction for the development of selenium‐enrichment supplements with Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell factory. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry.