Display of active beta-glucosidase on the surface of Schizosaccharomyces pombe cells using novel anchor proteins

Surface Display—An Alternative to Classic Enzyme Immobilization

Enzyme immobilization to solid matrices often presents a challenge due to protein conformation sensitivity, desired enzyme purity, and requirements for the particular carrier properties and immobilization technique. Surface display of enzymes at the cell walls of microorganisms presents an alternative that has been the focus of many research groups worldwide in different fields, such as biotechnology, energetics, pharmacology, medicine, and food technology. The range of systems by which a heterologous protein can be displayed at the cell surface allows the appropriate one to be found for almost every case. However, the efficiency of display systems is still quite low. The most frequently used yeast for the surface display of proteins is Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, apart from its many advantages, Saccharomyces cerevisiae has some disadvantages, such as low robustness in industrial applications, hyperglycosylation of some heterologous proteins, and relatively low efficiency of surface display. Thus, in the recent years the display systems for alternative yeast hosts with better performances including Pichia pastoris, Hansenula polymorpha, Blastobotrys adeninivorans, Yarrowia lipolytica, Kluyveromyces marxianus, and others have been developed. Different strategies of surface display aimed to increase the amount of displayed protein, including new anchoring systems and new yeast hosts are reviewed in this paper.

Enhancing 3-hydroxypropionic acid production in combination with sugar supply engineering by cell surface-display and metabolic engineering of Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Background

Economical production of value-added chemicals from renewable biomass is a promising path to sustainability. 3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an important chemical for building a bio-sustainable society. Establishment of 3-HP production from renewable resources such as glucose would provide a bio-sustainable alternative to the production of acrylic acid from fossil resources.

Results

Here, we describe metabolic engineering of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe to enhance 3-HP production from glucose and cellobiose via the malonyl-CoA pathway. The mcr gene, encoding the malonyl-CoA reductase of Chloroflexus aurantiacus, was dissected into two functionally distinct fragments, and the activities of the encoded protein were balanced. To increase the cellular supply of malonyl-CoA and acetyl-CoA, we introduced genes encoding endogenous aldehyde dehydrogenase, acetyl-CoA synthase from Salmonella enterica, and endogenous pantothenate kinase. The resulting strain produced 3-HP at 1.0 g/L from a culture starting at a glucose concentration of 50 g/L. We also engineered the sugar supply by displaying beta-glucosidase (BGL) on the yeast cell surface. When grown on 50 g/L cellobiose, the beta-glucosidase-displaying strain consumed cellobiose efficiently and produced 3-HP at 3.5 g/L. Under fed-batch conditions starting from cellobiose, this strain produced 3-HP at up to 11.4 g/L, corresponding to a yield of 11.2% (g-3-HP/g-glucose; given that 1 g cellobiose corresponds to 1.1 g glucose upon digestion).

Conclusions

In this study, we constructed a series of S. pombe strains that produced 3-HP via the malonyl-CoA pathway. Our study also demonstrated that BGL display using cellobiose and/or cello-oligosaccharides as a carbon source has the potential to improve the titer and yield of malonyl-CoA- and acetyl-CoA-derived compounds.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12934-018-1025-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Metabolic engineering of Schizosaccharomyces pombe via CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing for lactic acid production from glucose and cellobiose

Modification of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe genome is often laborious, time consuming due to the lower efficiency of homologous recombination. Here, we constructed metabolically engineered S. pombe strains using a CRISPR-Cas9 system and also demonstrated D-lactic acid (D-LA) production from glucose and cellobiose. Genes encoding two separate pyruvate decarboxylases (PDCs), an L-lactic acid dehydrogenase (L-LDH), and a minor alcohol dehydrogenase (SPBC337.11) were disrupted, thereby attenuating ethanol production. To increase the cellular supply of acetyl-CoA, an important metabolite for growth, we introduced genes encoding bacterial acetylating acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes (Escherichia coli MhpF and EutE). D-LA production by the resulting strain was achieved by expressing a Lactobacillus plantarum gene encoding D-lactate dehydrogenase. The engineered strain efficiently consumed glucose and produced D-LA at 25.2 g/L from 35.5 g/L of consumed glucose with a yield of 0.71 g D-LA / g glucose. We further modified this strain by expressing beta-glucosidase by cell surface display; the resulting strain produced D-LA at 24.4 g/L from 30 g/L of cellobiose in minimal medium, with a yield of 0.68 g D-LA / g glucose. To our knowledge, this study represents the first report of a S. pombe strain that was metabolically engineered using a CRISPR-Cas9 system, and demonstrates the possibility of engineering S. pombe for the production of value-added chemicals.

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Schizosaccharomyces pombe were metabolically engineered using a CRISPR-Cas9 system.

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D-lactic acid (D-LA) producing Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains were constructed.

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25.2 g/L of D-LA was produced with a yield of 0.71 g-D-LA / g-glucose.

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Beta-glucosidase was expressed on this engineered S. pombe strain.

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D-LA was produced at 24.4 g/L from 30 g/L of cellobiose directly.

Development of new tolerant strains to hydrophilic and hydrophobic organic solvents by the yeast surface display methodology

Yeast surface display is a research methodology based on anchoring functional proteins and peptides onto the surface of the cells of this eukaryotic organism. Its development has resulted in the construction of a good number of new whole-cell biocatalysts with diverse applications in biotechnology, pharmacy, and medicine. In this work, we describe the design of new yeast strains in which several proteins and peptides have been introduced at the N-terminal position of protein agglutinin Aga2p. In all cases, proteins were correctly expressed and displayed on the cell surface according to the western blot, fluorescence microscopy, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) analyses. The introduction of a glycosylable, Ser/Thr-rich protein (S1) resulted in improved resistance to ethanol, nonane, and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) stress. The protein with a very high hydrophobic content (S2d) proved to confer tolerance to acetonitrile, ethanol, nonane, salt, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The introduction of five leucine residues at the N-terminal position of S1 and S2 resulted in similar or increased resistance to the above-mentioned stress conditions. The adverse effects described in a previous work, when these residues were introduced into the N-terminus of Aga2p, with no other protein acting as a spacer, were not observed. Indeed, these strains grew better in the presence of hydrophilic solvents such as acetonitrile and ethanol. The new strains reported in this work have biotechnological potentiality given their behavior under adverse conditions of interest for biocatalytic and industrial processes.

Isobutanol production from cellobiose in Escherichia coli

Converting lignocellulosics into biofuels remains a promising route for biofuel production. To facilitate strain development for specificity and productivity of cellulosic biofuel production, a user friendly Escherichia coli host was engineered to produce isobutanol, a drop-in biofuel candidate, from cellobiose. A beta-glucosidase was expressed extracellularly by either excretion into the media, or anchoring to the cell membrane. The excretion system allowed for E. coli to grow with cellobiose as a sole carbon source at rates comparable to those with glucose. The system was then combined with isobutanol production genes in three different configurations to determine whether gene arrangement affected isobutanol production. The most productive strain converted cellobiose to isobutanol in titers of 7.64 ± 0.19 g/L with a productivity of 0.16 g/L/h. These results demonstrate that efficient cellobiose degradation and isobutanol production can be achieved by a single organism, and provide insight for optimization of strains for future use in a consolidated bioprocessing system for renewable production of isobutanol.

Yeast arming by the Aga2p system: effect of growth conditions in galactose on the efficiency of the display and influence of expressing leucine-containing peptides

The amino or carboxy-terminal regions of certain cell wall proteins are capable of anchoring foreign proteins or peptides on the cell wall of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This possibility has resulted in the development of a methodology known as yeast display which has powerful applications in biotechnology, pharmacy, and medicine. This work describes the results of experiments in which the agglutinin Aga2p protein is used as an anchor and several leucine-based peptides have been introduced into its N-terminal or C-terminal position. We found that the sequence of these peptides can affect plasmid stability, growth kinetics, and levels of the fusion protein displayed, and we analyzed how the incubation conditions influence these parameters. Besides, we show that the introduction of these small peptides can modify the properties of cell cover; in particular, fusing five or ten leucine residues to the Aga2p protein results in greater hydrophobicity of the cell wall and also in increased resistance to the presence of the organic solvents acetonitrile and ethanol and to high salt concentrations. The introduction of the RLRLL sequence also results in higher resistance to the exposure of yeast cells to NaCl stress.