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A variety of techniques for strain engineering in Saccharomyces cerevisiae have recently been developed. However, especially when multiple genetic manipulations are required, strain construction is still a time-consuming process. This study describes new CRISPR/Cas9-based approaches for easy, fast strain construction in yeast and explores their potential for simultaneous introduction of multiple genetic modifications. An open-source tool (http://yeastriction.tnw.tudelft.nl) is presented for identification of suitable Cas9 target sites in S. cerevisiae strains. A transformation strategy, using in vivo assembly of a guideRNA plasmid and subsequent genetic modification, was successfully implemented with high accuracies. An alternative strategy, using in vitro assembled plasmids containing two gRNAs, was used to simultaneously introduce up to six genetic modifications in a single transformation step with high efficiencies. Where previous studies mainly focused on the use of CRISPR/Cas9 for gene inactivation, we demonstrate the versatility of CRISPR/Cas9-based engineering of yeast by achieving simultaneous integration of a multigene construct combined with gene deletion and the simultaneous introduction of two single-nucleotide mutations at different loci. Sets of standardized plasmids, as well as the web-based Yeastriction target-sequence identifier and primer-design tool, are made available to the yeast research community to facilitate fast, standardized and efficient application of the CRISPR/Cas9 system.

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BackgroundFlavonoids comprise a large family of secondary plant metabolic intermediates that exhibit a wide variety of antioxidant and human health-related properties. Plant production of flavonoids is limited by the low productivity and the complexity of the recovered flavonoids. Thus to overcome these limitations, metabolic engineering of specific pathway in microbial systems have been envisaged to produce high quantity of a single molecules.ResultSaccharomyces cerevisiae was engineered to produce the key intermediate flavonoid, naringenin, solely from glucose. For this, specific naringenin biosynthesis genes from Arabidopsis thaliana were selected by comparative expression profiling and introduced in S. cerevisiae. The sole expression of these A. thaliana genes yielded low extracellular naringenin concentrations (<5.5 μM). To optimize naringenin titers, a yeast chassis strain was developed. Synthesis of aromatic amino acids was deregulated by alleviating feedback inhibition of 3-deoxy-d-arabinose-heptulosonate-7-phosphate synthase (Aro3, Aro4) and byproduct formation was reduced by eliminating phenylpyruvate decarboxylase (Aro10, Pdc5, Pdc6). Together with an increased copy number of the chalcone synthase gene and expression of a heterologous tyrosine ammonia lyase, these modifications resulted in a 40-fold increase of extracellular naringenin titers (to approximately 200 μM) in glucose-grown shake-flask cultures. In aerated, pH controlled batch reactors, extracellular naringenin concentrations of over 400 μM were reached.ConclusionThe results reported in this study demonstrate that S. cerevisiae is capable of de novo production of naringenin by coexpressing the naringenin production genes from A. thaliana and optimization of the flux towards the naringenin pathway. The engineered yeast naringenin production host provides a metabolic chassis for production of a wide range of flavonoids and exploration of their biological functions.