BackgroundGlycerol is an abundant by-product of biodiesel production and has several advantages as a substrate in biotechnological applications. Unfortunately, the popular production host Saccharomyces cerevisiae can barely metabolize glycerol by nature.ResultsIn this study, two evolved derivatives of the strain CEN.PK113-1A were created that were able to grow in synthetic glycerol medium (strains PW-1 and PW-2). Their growth performances on glycerol were compared with that of the previously published evolved CEN.PK113-7D derivative JL1. As JL1 showed a higher maximum specific growth rate on glycerol (0.164 h−1 compared to 0.119 h−1 for PW-1 and 0.127 h−1 for PW-2), its genomic DNA was subjected to whole-genome resequencing. Two point mutations in the coding sequences of the genes UBR2 and GUT1 were identified to be crucial for growth in synthetic glycerol medium and subsequently verified by reverse engineering of the wild-type strain CEN.PK113-7D. The growth rate of the resulting reverse-engineered strain was 0.130 h−1. Sanger sequencing of the GUT1 and UBR2 alleles of the above-mentioned evolved strains PW-1 and PW-2 also revealed one single-point mutation in these two genes, and both mutations were demonstrated to be also crucial and sufficient for obtaining a maximum specific growth rate on glycerol of ~0.120 h−1.ConclusionsThe current work confirmed the importance of UBR2 and GUT1 as targets for establishing glycerol utilization in strains of the CEN.PK family. In addition, it shows that a growth rate on glycerol of 0.130 h−1 can be established in reverse-engineered CEN.PK strains by solely replacing a single amino acid in the coding sequences of both Ubr2 and Gut1.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-016-0696-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.