Metabolic, organoleptic and transcriptomic impact of saccharomyces cerevisiae genes involved in the biosynthesis of linear and substituted esters

Abstract

Esters constitute a broad family of volatile compounds impacting the organoleptic properties of many beverages, including wine and beer. They can be classified according to their chemical structure. Higher alcohol acetates differ from fatty acid ethyl esters, whereas a third group, substituted ethyl esters, contributes to the fruitiness of red wines. Derived from yeast metabolism, the biosynthesis of higher alcohol acetates and fatty acid ethyl esters has been widely investigated at the enzymatic and genetic levels. As previously reported, two pairs of esterases, respectively encoded by the paralogue genes ATF1 and ATF2, and EEB1 and EHT1, are mostly involved in the biosynthesis of higher alcohol acetates and fatty acid ethyl esters. These esterases have a moderate effect on the biosynthesis of substituted ethyl esters, which depend on mono-acyl lipases encoded by MGL2 and YJU3. The functional characterization of such genes helps to improve our understanding of substituted ester metabolism in the context of wine alcohol fermentation. In order to evaluate the overall sensorial impact of esters, we attempted to produce young red wines without esters by generating a multiple esterase-free strain (∆atf1, ∆atf2, ∆eeb1, and ∆eht1). Surprisingly, it was not possible to obtain the deletion of MGL2 in the ∆atf1/∆atf2/ ∆eeb1/ ∆eht1 background, highlighting unsuspected genetic incompatibilities between ATF1 and MGL2. A preliminary RNA-seq analysis depicted the overall effect of the ∆atf1/∆atf2/ ∆eeb1/ ∆eht1 genotype that triggers the expression shift of 1124 genes involved in nitrogen and lipid metabolism, but also chromatin organization and histone acetylation. These findings reveal unsuspected regulatory roles of ester metabolism in genome expression for the first time.