The yeast Dekkera bruxellensis genome contains two orthologs of the ARO10 gene encoding for phenylpyruvate decarboxylase

Abstract

The yeast Dekkera bruxellensis possesses important physiological traits that enable it to grow in industrial environments as either spoiling yeast of wine production or a fermenting strain used for lambic beer, or fermenting yeast in the bioethanol production process. In this work, in silico analysis of the Dekkera genome database allowed the identification of two paralogous genes encoding for phenylpyruvate decarboxylase (DbARO10) that represents a unique trait among the hemiascomycetes. The molecular analysis of the theoretical protein confirmed its protein identity. Upon cultivation of the cell in medium containing phenylpyruvate, both increases in gene expression and in phenylpyruvate decarboxylase activity were observed. Both genes were differentially expressed depending on the culture condition and the type of metabolism, which indicated the difference in the biological function of their corresponding proteins. The importance of the duplicated DbARO10 genes in the D. bruxellensis genome was discussed and represents the first effort to understand the production of flavor by this yeast