Breeding of high ethanol producing yeast by screening from mutant library

Ogino, Chiaki*; Kahar, P.*; Lee, J. M.*; Sato, Katsuya; Ono, Yutaka; Kondo, Akihiko*

Ethanol fermentation from hydrolyzed lignocellulosic biomass with yeast is very important. However, in common sense, there are several chemical inhibitors for yeast from hydrolyzed biomass. Therefore, screening of yeast strain, possessing the tolerance properties against these chemical inhibitors, should be found from nature resources or mutant libraries. To overcome the problem, we have screened yeast strains tolerant to many chemical inhibitors contained in bagasse sugar lysate (BSL) at high temperature (35 C) from 1500 strains out of national bio-resource center yeast collection. We found that F118 strain could grow and ferment BSL and produce ethanol. For increasing of the yield and ethanol fermentation efficiency of F118 strain, the adaptation of F118 strain to high temperature was conducted, followed by carbon ion beam irradiation. Consequently, we have successfully obtained F118S88 strain as a good candidate for ethanol production from BSL at high temperature.