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During hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass, monomeric sugars and a broad range of inhibitory compounds are formed and released. These inhibitors, which can be organized around three main groups, furans, weak acids and phenolics, reduce ethanol yield and productivity by affecting the microorganism performance during the fermentation step. Among the microorganisms that have been evaluated for lignocellulosic hydrolysate ethanol fermentation, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae appears to be the least sensitive. In order to overcome the effect of inhibitors, strategies that include improvement of natural tolerance of microorganism and use of fermentation control strategies have been developed. An overview of the origin, effects and mechanisms of action of known inhibitors on S. cerevisiae is given. Fermentation control strategies as well as metabolic, genetic and evolutionary engineering strategies to obtain S. cerevisiae strains with improved tolerance are discussed.

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Production of bioethanol from forest and agricultural products requires a fermenting organism that converts all types of sugars in the raw material to ethanol in high yield and with a high rate. This review summarizes recent research aiming at developing industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with the ability to ferment all lignocellulose-derived sugars. The properties required from the industrial yeast strains are discussed in relation to four benchmarks: (1) process water economy, (2) inhibitor tolerance, (3) ethanol yield, and (4) specific ethanol productivity. Of particular importance is the tolerance of the fermenting organism to fermentation inhibitors formed during fractionation/pretreatment and hydrolysis of the raw material, which necessitates the use of robust industrial strain background. While numerous metabolic engineering strategies have been developed in laboratory yeast strains, only a few approaches have been realized in industrial strains. The fermentation performance of the existing industrial pentose-fermenting S. cerevisiae strains in lignocellulose hydrolysate is reviewed. Ethanol yields of more than 0.4 g ethanol/g sugar have been achieved with several xylose-fermenting industrial strains such as TMB 3400, TMB 3006, and 424A(LNF-ST), carrying the heterologous xylose utilization pathway consisting of xylose reductase and xylitol dehydrogenase, which demonstrates the potential of pentose fermentation in improving lignocellulosic ethanol production.

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