Yeast are comprised of diverse single-cell fungal species including budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and various nonconventional yeasts. Budding yeast is well known as an important industrial microorganism, which has been widely applied in various fields, such as biopharmaceutical and health industry, food, light industry and biofuels production. In the recent years, various yeast strains from different ecological environments have been isolated and characterized. Novel species have been continuously identified, and strains with diverse physiological characteristics such as stress resistance and production of bioactive compounds were selected, which proved abundant biodiversity of natural yeast resources. Genome mining of yeast strains, as well as multi-omics analyses (transcriptome, proteome and metabolome, etc.) can reveal diverse genetic diversity for strain engineering. The genetic resources including genes encoding various enzymes and regulatory proteins, promoters, and other elements, can be employed for development of robust strains. In addition to exploration of yeast natural diversity, phenotypes that are more suitable for industrial applications can be obtained by generation of a variety of genetic diversity through mutagenesis, laboratory adaptation, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology design. The optimized genetic elements can be used to efficiently improve strain performance. Exploration of yeast biodiversity and genetic diversity can be employed to build efficient cell factories and produce biological enzymes, vaccines, various natural products as well as other valuable products. In this review, progress on yeast diversity is summarized, and the future prospects on efficient development and utilization of yeast biodiversity are proposed. The methods and schemes described in this review also provide a reference for exploration of diversity of other industrial microorganisms and development of efficient strains.
酵母是一类包括酿酒酵母和非常规酵母在内的多种单细胞真菌的总称，其中酿酒酵母是应用较多的重要工业微生物，广泛应用于生物医药、食品、轻工和生物燃料生产等不同生物制造领域。近年来，研究者从不同生态环境中分离了大量的酵母菌株，鉴定了多个新种，也发现了抗逆性不同以及具有多种活性产物合成能力的菌株，证明天然酵母资源具有丰富的生物多样性和功能多样性。利用基因组挖掘以及转录组、蛋白组等多组学分析研究，可进一步开发利用酵母遗传多样性，获得酶和调节蛋白的基因以及启动子等遗传元件改造酵母菌株。除了利用酵母的天然遗传多样性，还可通过诱变、驯化、代谢工程改造及合成生物学等技术产生具有多种非天然多样性的菌株。此外，对天然遗传元件也可以进行突变和定向进化，所产生的新遗传元件可用于有效提升菌株的性能。开发利用酵母的生物多样性，对构建高效酵母细胞工厂，生产生物酶、疫苗以及多种活性天然产物等产品具有重要意义。文中对酵母生物多样性的研究现状进行综述，并对未来高效开发利用酵母菌株资源和遗传资源的研究进行了展望。文中所总结的研究方法和思路也可为研究其他工业微生物的多样性及进行高效菌株的选育提供参考。.
Keywords: biodiversity; biological manufacturing; cell factory; identification of novel species; synthetic biology; yeast.