In order to establish a low-cost bioethanol production process from lignocellulosic residues, efficient conversion of the two dom-inating monomer sugars, glucose and xylose, to ethanol should be achieved. However, the most commonly used yeast in bioethanol production, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is not natively capable of utilizing xylose which is second most abundant sugar in the ligno-cellulosic biomass