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Lachancea kluyveri (Saccharomyces kluyveri) is a budding yeast first isolated within the yeast flora from the intestinal canal of Drosophila in the Yosemite region in California and described as Saccharomyces kluyveri in 1956 [1]. As S. kluyveri shows close phylogenetic relationship with a variety of species of other genera including Kluyveromyces and Zygosaccharomyces, it was proposed to reassign this species among the Lachancea genus [2]. L. kluyveri's habitat has not been extensively characterized as only about 30 isolates have been described to date. However, the species appears to be widespread in the environment. It has been isolated from Drosophila species in North America, from soil in Europe, and from various tree species in India and North America.

In contrast to S. cerevisiae, L. kluyveri utilizes fermentation and degrades sugars only in the absence of oxygen. Due to this efficient use of glucose, S. kluyveri is becoming a model organism for industrial applications, such as the production of proteins under aerobic glucose-limited conditions [3]. Another interesting aspect of S. kluyveri's metabolism is that, contrary to other species of the Saccharomycetaceae family, it can use pyrimidines and their degradation products as its sole nitrogen source [4].

The strain used in this work (type strain CBS3082) is diploid. It has 8 pairs of homologous chromosomes in this strain [5] and strain CBS4568 [6], ranging from 0.95 Mb to 3Mb. The nuclear genome is approx. 11.3 Mb long. The ribosomal DNA is organized as a unique 8656 bp long cluster including the 5S gene. A total of 5321 protein-encoding genes was predicted in silico with a mean of one gene per 2.1 kb. About 6% of the genes contain one or occasionally two introns.
Whereas L. kluyveri does not result from the Whole Genome duplication of the ancestral Saccharomyces, gene duplications are found in its genome as frequently as in S. cerevisiae. Genes of tRNA (258) and non-coding RNA (51) detected are closely related to those of S. cerevisiae. Transposable element content is low with only one family of degenerate class II elements and two families of LTR-retrotransposons. The major family, the Ty1/copia element Tsk1, contains potential active elements and totalizes more than 200 insertion sites. The most intriguing feature of L. kluyveri is probably the higher GC rate observed along the left arm of chromosome C that could not be linked to a bias in gene density or functional clustering of genes.
Two preliminary genome surveys of L. kluyveri strain CBS 3082 have been published [5, 7, 8]. The nucleotide sequence of a 14.2-kb long linear DNA plasmid, pSKL, isolated from some strains of L. kluyveri, was found to be highly similar to the killer plasmid of Kluyveromyces lactis, though no associated killer function has been described in L. kluyveri [9]. The mitochondrial genome of L. kluyveri, which is a petite-negative yeast, was reported to be 49 kb long with an average G+C content of 22 % but is still not fully sequenced [10].

1. Phaff HJ, Miller MW, Shifrine M (1956) The taxonomy of yeasts isolated from Drosophila in the Yosemite region of California. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek 22(2):145-61.
2. Kurtzman CP (2003) Phylogenetic circumscription of Saccharomyces, Kluyveromyces and other members of the Saccharomycetaceae, and the proposal of the new genera Lachancea, Nakaseomyces, Naumovia, Vanderwaltozyma and Zygotorulaspora. FEMS Yeast Research 4(3):233-245.
3. Møller K, Sharif MZ, Olsson L (2004) Production of fungal alpha-amylase by Saccharomyces kluyveri in glucose-limited cultivations. J. Biotechnol. 111(3):311-318.
4. Gojkovic Z, Paracchini S, Piskur, J. (1998) A new model organism for studying the catabolism of pyrimidines and purines. Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. 431:475-479.
5. Neuvéglise C, Bon E, Lépingle A, Wincker P, Artiguenave F, Gaillardin C, Casaregola S (2000) Genomic exploration of the hemiascomycetous yeasts: 9. Saccharomyces kluyveri. FEBS Letters 487(1):56-60.
6. Weinstock KG, Strathern JN (1993) Molecular genetics in Saccharomyces kluyveri: the HIS3 homolog and its use as a selectable marker gene in S. kluyveri and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast 9(4):351-61.
7. Souciet J et al., (2000) Genomic exploration of the hemiascomycetous yeasts: 1. A set of yeast species for molecular evolution studies. FEBS Letters 487(1):3-12.
8. Cliften PF, Hillier LW, Fulton L, Graves T, Miner T, Gish WR, Waterston RH, Johnston M (2001) Surveying Saccharomyces genomes to identify functional elements by comparative DNA sequence analysis. Genome Res. 11(7):1175-86.
9. Hishinuma F, Hirai K (1991) Genome organization of the linear plasmid, pSKL, isolated from Saccharomyces kluyveri. Mol. Gen. Genet. 226(1-2):97-106.
10. Piskur J, Smole S, Groth C, Petersen RF, Pedersen MB (1998) Structure and genetic stability of mitochondrial genomes vary among yeasts of the genus Saccharomyces. Int. J. Syst. Bacteriol. 48:1015-1024.