Yeast as a promising heterologous host for steroid bioproduction

With the rapid development of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering technologies, yeast has been generally considered as promising hosts for the bioproduction of secondary metabolites. Sterols are essential components of cell membrane, and are the precursors for the biosynthesis of steroid hormones, signaling molecules, and defense molecules in the higher eukaryotes, which are of pharmaceutical and agricultural significance. In this mini-review, we summarize the recent engineering efforts of using yeast to synthesize various steroids, and discuss the structural diversity that the current steroid-producing yeast can achieve, the challenge and the potential of using yeast as the bioproduction platform of various steroids from higher eukaryotes.