The Complete Pathway for Thiosulfate Utilization in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

is known to grow with thiosulfate as a sulfur source, and it produces more ethanol when using thiosulfate than using sulfate. Here, we report how it assimilates thiosulfate. absorbed thiosulfate into the cell through two sulfate permeases, Sul1 and Sul2. Two rhodaneses, Rdl1 and Rdl2, converted thiosulfate to a persulfide and sulfite. The persulfide was reduced by cellular thiols to HS, and sulfite was reduced by sulfite reductase to HS. Cysteine synthase incorporated HS into -acetyl-l-homoserine to produce l-homocysteine, which is the precursor for cysteine and methionine in Several other rhodaneses replaced Rdl1 and Rdl2 for thiosulfate utilization in the yeast. Thus, any organisms with the sulfate assimilation system potentially could use thiosulfate as a sulfur source, since rhodaneses are common in most organisms. The complete pathway of thiosulfate assimilation in baker's yeast is determined. The finding reveals the extensive overlap between sulfate and thiosulfate assimilation. Rhodanese is the only additional enzyme for thiosulfate utilization. The common presence of rhodanese in most organisms, including , , and , suggests that most organisms with the sulfate assimilation system also use thiosulfate. Since it takes less energy to reduce thiosulfate than sulfate for assimilation, thiosulfate has the potential to become a choice of sulfur in optimized media for industrial fermentation.