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Background and Objective: Xylose reductases belong to the aldo-keto reductase family of enzymes, which catalyse the conversion of xylose to xylitol. Yeast xylose reductases have been intensively studied in the last two decades due to their significance in biotechnological production of ethanol and xylitol from xylose. Due to its GRAS status and pronounced tolerance to harsh conditions, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the ideal organism for industrial production of both xylitol and ethanol. However, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is unable to use xylose as the sole carbon source due to the lack of xylose specific transporters and insufficient activity of metabolic pathways for xylose utilisation. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of attempts in increasing biotechnological potential of xylose reductases and to highlight the prospective of this application. Results and Conclusion: In order to create strains with improved xylose utilization, different approaches were attempted including simultaneous overexpression of xylitol dehydrogenase, xylose reductase and pentose phosphate pathway enzymes, heterologous expression of putative xylose transporters or heterologous expression of genes coding for enzymes included in the xylose metabolism, respectively. Furthermore, number of attempts to genetically modify different xylose reductases is increasing. This review presents current knowledge about yeast xylose reductases and the different approaches applied in order to improve xylose metabolism in yeast.Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

In the past decade much effort has been devoted to the development of new expression systems and novel techniques for the surface display of heterologous proteins in yeast in order to improve their applications in biotechnology, food technology, pharmacology and medicine. Heterologous protein-encoding genes are generally fused with genes coding for yeast cell wall proteins or their fragments required for anchoring. The variety of reactions by which a protein can be displayed at the cell surface enables finding the appropriate one for each individual protein. However, it is still challenging how to improve the efficiency of display of protein complexes and increase the quantity of protein displayed on the yeast surface. Recently, synthetic protein chimeras that self-assemble into the scaffolds on the yeast surface displaying different proteins have been constructed. This review focuses on systems and techniques for display of recombinant proteins on the yeast cell surfaces and applications afforded by this technology.