Heterologous Protein Expression in Pichia pastoris: Latest Research Progress and Applications

Pichia pastoris is a well-known platform strain for heterologous protein expression. Over the past five years, different strategies to improve the efficiency of recombinant protein expression by this yeast strain have been developed; these include a patent-free protein expression kit, construction of the P. pastoris CBS7435Ku70 platform strain with its high efficiency in site-specific recombination of plasmid DNA into the genomic DNA, the design of synthetic promoters and their variants by combining different core promoters with multiple putative transcription factors, the generation of mutant GAP promoter variants with various promoter strengths, codon optimization, engineering the α-factor signal sequence by replacing the native glutamic acid at the Kex2 cleavage site with the other 19 natural amino acids and the addition of mammalian signal sequence to the yeast signal sequence, and the co-expression of single chaperones, multiple chaperones or helper proteins that aid in recombinant protein folding. Publically available high-quality genome data from multiple strains of P. pastoris GS115, DSMZ 70382, and CBS7435 and the continuous development of yeast expression kits have successfully promoted the metabolic engineering of this strain to produce carotenoids, xanthophylls, nootkatone, ricinoleic acid, dammarenediol-II, and hyaluronic acid. The cell-surface display of enzymes has obviously increased enzyme stability, and high-level intracellular expression of acyl-CoA and ethanol O-acyltransferase, lipase and d-amino acid oxidase has opened up applications in whole-cell biocatalysis for producing flavor molecules and biodiesel, as well as the deracemization of racemic amino acids. High-level expression of various food-grade enzymes, cellulases, and hemicellulases for applications in the food, feed and biorefinery industries is in its infancy and needs strengthening.