Insight into yeast: A study model of lipid metabolism and terpenoid biosynthesis

Abstract

With the development of transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, and mathematical modeling, yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is recently considered as a model studying strain by biologists who try to reveal the mystery of microorganic metabolism or develop heterologous pharmaceutical and economic products. Among S. cerevisiae metabolic research, lipid metabolism always attracts great interest because of its dominant role in cell physiology. Related researchers have developed multiple functions from cell membrane component such as adjustment to changing environment and impact on protein folding. Nowadays, many common human diseases such as diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, and atherosclerosis are related to lipid metabolism, which makes the study of lipids a desperate need. In addition to lipid metabolism, the study of the native mevalonic acid (MVA) pathway in S. cerevisiae has increased exponentially because of its huge potential to produce economically important products terpenoids. With the progress of technology in gene engineering and metabolic engineering, more and more biosynthetic pathways will be developed and put into industrial application.

Fermentation Strategies for Production of Pharmaceutical Terpenoids in Engineered Yeast

“…Ergosterol is synthesized through this process. By using molecular biology methods, namely gene deletion and high-through screening methods, all enzymes and genes upstream the MVA pathway, and downstream ergosterol synthesis in S. cerevisiae, have been clarified [64]. Terpenoids cannot be directly produced by wild type strains of S. cerevisiae without genetic modifications because it requires the availability of precursors for transfer of intermediates between compartments (the cytoplasm and endoplasmic reticulum) and diverse class of Cytochrome P450 (CYP-CPR) enzymes for the oxygenation reactions to produce structurally diverse terpenes [57].…”

“…However, different gene regulation is necessary for different type of end-products. For instance, in sesquiterpenes production, ERG9 enzyme is required to be downregulated to lower the metabolic flow from farnesyl pyrophosphate to squalene, while in triterpenoids production, the same enzyme is upregulated to increase precursors pull for triterpenoids [64]. In addition, distinctive plant derived cytochrome P450 enzymes for specific target products should be cloned and expressed as well [12].…”

Understanding Agarwood Formation and Its Challenges

“…Much information has been gathered on terpenoid biosynthetic pathways (Hu and Lu 2015 ;Singh and Sharma 2015 ). In plants, two pathways have been established: (1) the mevalonic acid (MVA) and (2) the 1-deoxy-d -xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP), also known as the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathways.…”