Sustainable sweeteners: unveiling biotechnological promise of novel yeast strains for low-calorie sweetener production

In the food context, people are always looking for alternative ways to substitute highly caloric sugars with sweeteners that have little or no calories. This is an ongoing effort to find new methods for creating sweet-tasting food without the negative health effects that come with consuming too much sugar. This study tested the capacity of 32 yeast strains to produce erythritol, mannitol, and arabitol in a medium containing glycerol or glucose as carbon sources. Two strains of Yarrowia lipolytica CCMA 0242 and CCMA 0357 and Candida rugosa CCMA 0371 were found to have the greatest capacity to produce erythritol, with yields of 5.19 ± 0.58, 4.60 ± 0.63 and 10.70 ± 0.01 g/L, respectively. The potential of the strains evaluated is promising, especially for C. rugosa, a yeast not yet explored for the production of polyols, which produced the highest amounts of erythritol, mannitol, and arabitol, using glycerol as a carbon source, contributing to a fermentative process economically competitive and with a great biotechnological application at the industrial level.