Protein Production with a Pichia pastoris OCH1 Knockout Strain in Fed-Batch Mode

The methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris is a widely used host organism for recombinant protein production in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. However, if the target product describes a glycoprotein, an α-1,6-mannosyltransferase located in the Golgi apparatus of P. pastoris, called OCH1, triggers hypermannosylation of the recombinant protein which significantly impedes following unit operations and hampers biopharmaceutical product applications. A knockout of the och1 gene allows the production of less-glycosylated proteins-however, morphology and physiology of P. pastoris also change, complicating the upstream process. Here, we describe a controlled and efficient bioprocess based on the specific substrate uptake rate (q s) for a recombinant P. pastoris OCH1 knockout strain expressing a peroxidase as model protein.