Bioprospecting Kluyveromyces marxianus as a Robust Host for Industrial Biotechnology

Abstract

Kluyveromyces marxianus is an emerging non-conventional food-grade yeast that is generally isolated from diverse habitats, like kefir grain, fermented dairy products, sugar industry sewage, plants, and sisal leaves. A unique set of beneficial traits, such as fastest growth, thermotolerance, and broad substrate spectrum (i.e., hemi-cellulose hydrolysates, xylose, l-arabinose, d-mannose, galactose, maltose, sugar syrup molasses, cellobiose, and dairy industry) makes this yeast a particularly attractive host for applications in a variety of food and biotechnology industries. In contrast to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, most of the K. marxianus strains are apparently Crabtree-negative or having aerobic-respiring characteristics, and unlikely to endure aerobic alcoholic fermentation. This is a desirable phenotype for the large-scale biosynthesis of products associated with biomass formation because the formation of ethanol as an undesirable byproduct can be evaded under aerobic conditions. Herein, we discuss the current insight into the potential applications of K. marxianus as a robust yeast cell factory to produce various industrially pertinent enzymes, bioethanol, cell proteins, probiotic, fructose, and fructo-oligosaccharides, and vaccines, with excellent natural features. Moreover, the biotechnological improvement and development of new biotechnological tools, particularly CRISPR–Cas9-assisted precise genome editing in K. marxianus are delineated. Lastly, the ongoing challenges, concluding remarks, and future prospects for expanding the scope of K. marxianus utilization in modern biotechnology, food, feed, and pharmaceutical industries are also thoroughly vetted. In conclusion, it is critical to apprehend knowledge gaps around genes, metabolic pathways, key enzymes, and regulation for gaining a complete insight into the mechanism for producing relevant metabolites by K. marxianus.

Green biomanufacturing in recombinant collagen biosynthesis: trends and selection in various expression systems

“…Although these expression systems have covered various directions of application, none of them is perfect, and it is important to develop new hosts for recombinant collagen expression, for example, food-grade Kluyveromyces marxianus, lipid-rich Yarrowia lipolytica, probiotic Bacillus subtilis and Lactococcus lactis. [89][90][91][92] K. marxianus is known for its strong secretion capacity, making it an ideal candidate for large-scale fermentation processes. In addition to its robust fermentation characteristics, it is also considered safe for food production.…”

“…In addition to its robust fermentation characteristics, it is also considered safe for food production. 89 Y. lipolytica is a yeast widely used in the food industry in recent years and performs better in some extreme and complex environments due to its better acid, alkaline and high-temperature tolerance. 90 The applications of B. subtilis and B. brevis are similar, but the biotechnologies of B. subtilis are relatively more mature and widely used.…”

Upgrading Non-Conventional Yeasts into Valuable Biofactories

“…Upgrading Non-conventional Yeasts into Valuable Biofactories DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109903 alternative to baker's yeast; bioremediation of textile dyes, cheese whey and copper; biomass for animal feeding; probiotics and high-temperature bioethanol production [67,69,72,73,75]. For instance, Nonklang et al found remarkable differences in high-temperature ethanol production between S. cerevisiae and K. marxianus as K. marxianus DMKU3-1042 was the fastest to convert glucose to ethanol at 45°C whereas none of the S. cerevisiae strains were able to grow at this temperature [67].…”

“…Some advantages of working with K. lactis yeasts are the capacity of producing heterologous proteins in simple growth medium, complete knowledge of their genome and more importantly, they can be easily genetically manipulated [75]. Due to its similarity in biosynthetic capacities to S. cerevisiae, K. lactis toolkits for heterologous gene expression are mostly the same.…”

Design and construction of shuttle expression vectors for non- conventional yeasts and bacteria

“…Promising unconventional chassis cells include the yeasts Yarrowia lipolytica, Kluyveromyces, and Pichia pastoris, and the bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum. Yarrowia lipolytica is primarily used for the production of proteins, oils, terpenes, organic acids, and sugar alcohols due to the su cient supply of acetyl-CoA and NADPH and the low glycosylation level of protein [8][9][10]; Kluyveromyces marxianus has been successfully used in the production of biofuel ethanol and aromatic compounds due to its bene cial traits including wide substrate utilization, rapid growth and high temperature tolerance [11][12][13][14]. Pichia pastoris is widely used in the production of heterologous proteins due to high protein secretion capacity and low glycosylation level, and is also used as a one-carbon carbon source utilization chassis due to the natural methylotrophic characteristics [15].…”