Synthesis and processing of the plant protein thaumatin in yeast

Various maturation forms of the plant protein thaumatin were expressed in yeast, using a promoter fragment of the glyceraldehyde- 3P -dehydrogenase (GAPDH) gene. Plasmids encoding preprothaumatin were shown to direct the synthesis of a processed form of the plant protein. The important role of signal sequences in the expression of the plant protein in yeast was indicated by the observation that plasmids encoding processed thaumatin forms were only poorly expressed, if at all. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the 843 nucleotide GAPDH promoter fragment revealed a characteristic structure with two regions of dyad symmetry containing translational starts of GAPDH and a putative 38 amino acid peptide. A promoter fragment from which the upstream region was deleted proved to be less efficient in thaumatin expression.