Tools for genetic engineering of the yeast Hansenula polymorpha

Hansenula polymorpha is a methylotrophic yeast species that has favorable properties for heterologous protein production and metabolic engineering. It provides an attractive expression platform with the capability to secrete high levels of commercially important proteins. Over the past few years many efforts have led to advances in the development of this microbial host including the generation of expression vectors containing strong constitutive or inducible promoters and a large array of dominant and auxotrophic markers. Moreover, highly efficient transformation procedures used to generate genetically stable strains are now available. Here, we describe these tools as well as the methods for genetic engineering of H. polymorpha.