Alkaline polygalacturonate lyase (PGL) production by Pichia pastoris GS115 was used as a model to study the mechanism and strategy for enhancing heterologous protein production. In order to enhance cell viability and volumetric recombinant protein productivity, sorbitol, which had been confirmed to be a non-repressive carbon source, was added together with methanol during the induction phase. The resultant PGL activity was up to 1593 U mL(-1), which was enhanced 1.85-fold compared to the control (863 U mL-1) cultured with sorbitol added at a constant rate of 3.6 g h(-1) L(-1) after an induction period of 100 h. Further results revealed that an appropriate sorbitol co-feeding strategy not only decreased the cell mortality to 8.8% (the control is about 23.1%) in the end of fermentation, but also reduced the proteolytic degradation of PGL. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.