(188bx) Engineering Protein Secretion Tags in Yarrowia Lioplytica and Its Industrial Application

Protein secretion tag, also known as signal peptide, drives the sorting, targeting and translocation of intracellular proteins to multiple organelles through secretory pathway. Some of these signal peptides lead proteins pass through the periplasmic space and export proteins outside the cellular membrane. A broad range of protein secretion tags have been characterized in industrially-relevant organisms in recent years. In this report, we aim to investigate the protein secretion efficiency of oleaginous yeast and demonstrate their application in biocatalysis, bioremediation and vaccine production. We accessed the protein secretion efficiency of three putative protein secretion tags with luciferase and fluorescence protein as reporter gene. Our results demonstrate that Y. lipolytica is an excellent host for heterologous protein expression and production. One of the engineered secretion tag improved protein secretion efficiency up to 40-fold. This work provides the preliminary test to build a protein secretion platform in oleaginous yeast, which could be applied to whole-cell biocatalysis, inexpensive reporter-sensor system and many other bioremediation and biomedical applications.