The strategy of genetic engineering Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce the plant-derived terpenoid drugs

Abstract:

The plant-derived terpenoids are widely used in the industries of food, medicine, cosmetics as well as agriculture, and it plays an increasingly vital role in the people’s life. However, terpenoids of natural sources are unavailable in sufficient amounts to meet the requirement of people’s life, because of the slow growth, complexity of extraction techniques and high cost of production, which make its application has been greatly limited. S. cerevisiae, as one kind of simple eukaryotes has the advantages of clear genetic background, fast growth and easy manipulation by genetic engineering. Furthermore, natural biosynthetic pathway of isoprenoids is also found in yeast cells. Therefore, yeast can be take as engineering host to reconstruct the isoprenoid pathway to fit the biosynthesis of plant terpenoids after fermentation. In this article, the biosynthesis process of terpenoids, along with the achievements and problems of engineering yeast to produce terpenoids will be reviewed.