Transcriptional Responses to Alkaline pH Across Fungi: Common and Differential Features, and Biotechnological Applications.

The transcriptional response to alkalinization in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus nidulans and Candida albicans raised the interest of the scientific community many years ago for diverse reasons, and the underlying signaling pathways have been elucidated in these organisms in detail. Within the last few years, transcriptomic data for other fungal species have become available, although in most cases little is known about the molecular basis controlling their adaptive response. The objective of this work is to provide an overview on how different fungi remodel their gene expression in response to environmental alkalinization, highlighting the similitudes and differences among them. Microbial stress-responsive promoters have been considered useful tools for biotechnological applications, such as expression of recombinant proteins of industrial interest. Recent work, emphasizing the usefulness of alkaline pH-inducible promoters for heterologous protein production, will also be discussed.