Chemical mutagenesis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for enhancing bioethanol production with fermentation at very high sugar concentration

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most promising unicellular fungi on account of its vital applications in biotechnology as well as bioethanol production. Improvement of ethanol production via very high-gravity (VHG) fermentation (fermentation at high sugar levels) was successfully developed using the ethidium bromide (EtB) mutagenesis of S. cerevisiae. This study found two developed mutants of S. cerevisiae (EtB20a and EtB20b) with varied capacity for ethanol production using EtB, depending on random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. Mutant EtB20b showed improved ethanol yield (19.5%) compared with the wild-type (18.0%), while the other mutant EtB20a exhibited retarded ethanol production (9.1%). Optimization of ethanol production by mutant EtB20b was performed under other conditions including temperature, pH, inoculum size, and incubation period. The highest production capacity of the yeasts was 20.8, 19.9, 19.5, and 19.5% at an optimum temperature of 30 °C, pH 6.0, incubation period of 72 h, and 1 mL of yeast suspension (optical density at 600 nm) with glucose utilization of 42.6, 40.7, 39.8, and 39.9%, respectively.