Engineering yeast for anaerobic 2,3-butanediol and glycerol production
Researchers from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) used enzyme-constrained genome-scale models (ecGEMs) to redesign the anaerobic metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for the co-production of 2,3-butanediol and glycerol. Seed cultures were prepared using the INFORS HT Minitron incubator shaker before fermentation experiments, enabling validation of model predictions through bioreactor cultivation and proteomic analysis. The study demonstrated that engineered yeast cells could achieve high glucose uptake rates by reallocating cellular resources toward glycolysis, highlighting the potential of ecGEMs as a powerful tool for metabolic engineering and strain development.
Fig. 3. of Publication: Proteomaps (Liebermeister et al., 2014) of the reference strain GSY013 (left) and the 2,3-butanediol-glycerol co-producing strain GSY014 (right), showing the relative abundances of major protein groups of the respective strains.