United States of America, As Represented by the Secretary of Agriculture

Ronald E Hector

Bruce S Dien

Michael A Cotta

Disclosed are isolated nucleic acid molecules that have promoter activity specific to xylose. The synthetic promoters, SEQ ID NO: 2, SEQ ID NO: 3, and SEQ ID NO: 4, promote the expression of a coding region of interest in transformed yeast cells.

Synthetic promoter for xylose-regulated gene expression

A xylose isomerase (XI) enzyme which exhibits increased activity and affinity for xylose is produced by strain TC2-24 of the rumen bacterium,. The gene encoding this enzyme may be used to produce improved recombinant yeast capable of utilizing xylose. The recombinant yeast are preferably transformed with heterologous polynucleotide sequences coding both theXI, and the xylulokinase (XKS) of aspecies. Yeast transformed with the polynucleotide sequences coding both of these XI and XKS exhibit significantly increased xylose utilization and cell growth on a culture medium containing xylose as the sole carbon source, in comparison to yeast transformed with XKS and XI from other sources.

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Washington, IL, United States of America

Ronald E Hector