Development of an asparagine-reducing yeast by adaptive evolution and uses thereof to reduce acrylamide formation

An isolated industrial yeast that degrades L-asparagine under non-inducing conditions produced by a method comprising:

• a) subculturing a wild-type industrial yeast strain, which expresses or has the capacity to express a cell-wall associated Asparaginase, in the presence of media containing D-asparagine as the sole nitrogen source;
• b) continuously subculturing, tracking growth rate and subjecting to mutagenesis weekly to produce cells that have multiple random mutations compared to the cells prior to subculturing;
• c) selecting cultures of b) when the growth rate reaches baseline;
• d) continuously subculturing cells in selective media containing methylamine, tracking growth rate, and mutagenizing weekly until growth rate in the presence of methylamine reaches that in selective media without methylamine to enrich for cells that have relevant multiple random mutations compared to the cells prior to subculturing in the selective media containing methylamine;
• e) isolating individual colonies of d) by plating on selective media containing methylamine, growing said colonies and selecting large and fast growing colonies;
• f) assaying selected colonies of e) for the ability to degrade L-asparagine under non-inducing conditions and selecting at least one colony with high L-asparagine degradation activity, as compared to cells at the start of d);
• g) repeating steps d) through f), increasing methylamine concentration each time, until L-asparagine degradation activity reaches a plateau;
• h) isolating the strain from g) in which L-asparagine degradation activity has reached a plateau.