iBB

Adaptation and tolerance to industrially relevant stress factors involve highly complex and coordinated molecular mechanisms occurring in the yeast cell with repercussions on the performance and economy of bioprocesses. The cell wall is among the players whose biochemical and biophysical properties can be finely tuned as yeast cells encounter different stresses throughout the course of industrial bioprocesses. A new review article from BSRG-iBB provides a critical opinion and a comprehensive view on the current knowledge on the involvement of the cell wall in the adaptive response and tolerance of yeasts to multiple stresses of biotechnological relevance. A few successful attempts to improve stress tolerance through the manipulation of cell wall biosynthetic pathway are also described and the available information for some non-conventional yeast species included. The review article is co-authored by the PhD student of the IST PhD programme in Biotechnology and Biosciences Ricardo Ribeiro and the thesis supervisor, Prof. Isabel Sá-Correia. It was was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology (section: Microbial Physiology and Metabolism).

Ricardo Ribeiro, IST PhD student in Biotechnology and Biosciences
from the FCT doctoral programme in Applied and Environmental
Microbiology (DP_AEM), at iBB-BSRG, presented his work during the symposium on “Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Physiology” of the Congress of Microbiology and Biotechnology 2019 (Microbiotec’19) which was held between the 5th and 7th of December 2019 in Coimbra, Portugal. The presentation was entitled “Yeast response and tolerance to acetic acid: focus on the cell envelope” This work was carried out under supervision of Prof. Dr. Isabel Sá- Correia (iBB-BSRG) and the collaboration of Dr. Mário Rodrigues’s team (BioISI), for the atomic force microscopy characterization of cell wall properties.

Ricardo Ribeiro, PhD student from the PhD program AEM - Applied

Environmental Microbiology delivered an oral presentation at the 7th Conference on Physiology of Yeast and Filamentous Fungi titled “Yeast response and tolerance to acetic acid: focus on the cell envelope” The work involves a collaboration between researchers from BSRG-iBB and BioISI. The meeting brought together researchers to exchange knowledge in the field of applied

physiology of yeasts and filamentous fungi, boosting the  understanding of these systems, envisaging their application in biotechnological, food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. The conference took place in Milan, Italy, on the 24th-27th June.