The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most
important industrial microorganisms and well-known for
its activity in the production of fermented beverages,
bread, bioethanol and food ingredients (Ostergaard et al.,
2000). Great advances have been made in the academic
world regarding the biology of this organism in the last
few decades, including its complete genome sequencing
in 1996 (Goffeau et al., 1996) and the setting up of well-
established protocols and methods for the genetic modifi-
cation of laboratory strains (Ausubel et al., 1989; Romanos
et al., 1992). However, the construction and use of geneti-
cally modified (GM) derivatives of industrial strains is still
in its early stages (Pronk, 2002; Schuller and Casal, 2005).
This study describes the construction of integrative vec-
tors for heterologous gene expression in industrial strains
of S. cerevisiae for the use of GM strains in fermentation
processes. The main characteristics of these vectors include
the following: (a) the possibility of high-copy number inte-
gration in the target genome and high genomic stability of
the recombinant, (b) the use of an environmentally-
friendly selection marker and the possibility of marker
rescue for multiple integrations, (c) the traceability of the