• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.587-601
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• 2013

During the last few decades, it has become evident that the compatibility of the yeast biochemical environment with the ability to process and translate the RNA transcript, along with its capacity to modify a translated protein, are relevant requirements for selecting this host cell for protein expression in several pharmaceutical and clinical applications. In particular, Pichia pastoris is used as an industrial host for recombinant protein and metabolite production, showing a powerful capacity to meet required biomolecular target production levels in high-throughput assays for functional genomics and drug screening. In addition, there is a great advantage to using P. pastoris for protein secretion, even at high molecular weights, since the recovery and purification steps are simplified owing to relatively low levels of endogenous proteins in the extracellular medium. Clearly, no single microexpression system can provide all of the desired properties for human protein production. Moreover, chemical and physical bioprocess parameters, including culture medium formulation, temperature, pH, agitation, aeration rates, induction, and feeding strategies, can highly influence product yield and quality. In order to benefit from the currently available wide range of biosynthesis strategies using P. pastoris, this mini review focuses on the developments and technological fermentation achievements, providing both a comparative and an overall integration analysis. The main aim is to highlight the relevance and versatility of the P. pastoris biosystem to the design of more cost-effective microfactories to meet the increasing demands for recombinant membrane proteins and clinical antibodies for several therapeutic applications.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.2082-2089
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• 2015

Avian beta-defensin 9 (AvBD9) is a small cationic peptide consisting of 41 amino acids that plays a crucial rule in innate immunity and acquired immunity in chickens. Owing to its wide antibacterial spectrum, lack of a residue, and failure to induce bacterial drug resistance, AvBD9 is expected to become a substitute for conventional antibiotics in the livestock and poultry industries. Using the preferred codon of Pichia pastoris, the mature AvBD9 peptide was designed and synthesized, based on the sequence from GenBank. The P. pastoris constitutive expression vector pGHKα was used to construct a pGHKα-AvBD9 recombinant plasmid. Restriction enzyme digestion was performed using SacI and BglII to remove the ampicillin resistance gene, and the plasmid was electrotransformed into P. pastoris GS115. High-expression strains with G418 resistance were screened, and the culture supernatant was analyzed by Tricine-SDS-PAGE and western blot assay to identify target bands of about 6 kDa. A concentrate of the supernatant containing AvBD9 was used for determination of antimicrobial activity. The supernatant concentrate was effective against Escherichia coli, Salmonella paratyphi, Salmonella pullorum, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterococcus faecalis, and Enterobacter cloacae. The fermentation product of P. pastoris carrying the recombinant AvBD9 plasmid was adjusted to 1.0 × 10⁸ CFU/ml and added to the drinking water of white feather broilers at different concentrations. The daily average weight gain and immune organ indices in broilers older than 7 days were significantly improved by the AvBD9 treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.669-674
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• 1997

This study was attempted to express human lactoferrin gene that has importance as a functional additive in food industry. Lactoferrin has distinctive antibacterial properties. Also, a number of phy-siological roles have been postulated for the lactoferrin in the modulation of immune and inflamatory responses and as a growth factor. Since it did not show feasible growth inhibition by antimicrobial test against HLF, Pichia pastoris was selected the best lactoferrin expression host. HLF expression plasmid pHIL-SI was integrated into the genomic DNA of P. pastoris GSl15. The integration was confirmed not only with 2.4Kb fragment of HLF gene by PCR(polymerase chain reaction) product, but also with same size of specific signal by southern blotting. Among the various pichica transformants, the JY-1 cell showed a positive response for the expression of HLF by the immunoblotting anaysis. The recombinant HLF protein was started to be secreated at 48hr of culture and reached at the highest secreation level at 96hr.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.4 s.132
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• pp.45-52
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• 2005

The manganese peroxidase (mnp5) from white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium has been heterologously expressed in the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris. The majority of the rMnP5 (recombinant MnP5) produced by P. pastoris exhibited an approximate molecular mass 45 kDa considerably larger than that of the predicting mnp5 due to two glycosylation sites of mnp5. After site direct mutation treatment, the effect of N-linked hyperglycosylation was examined by enzyme activity. Analysis by sodium dodesyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and Coomassie Brilliant Blue (CBB) staining revealed a major protein band with a molecular mass of 37 kDa. Enzyme activity of M-rMnP5 (mutant recombinant MnP5) was similar to that of rMnP5, indicating that hyperglycosylation did not affect the active site. In this work, active mnp5 was successfully expressed in P. pastoris, suggesting that P. pastoris has potential capability of producing active heme-containing proteins.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.1098-1102
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• 2009

Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA, C18:3 ${\Delta}^{6,9,12}$) is synthesized by a delta-6 fatty acid desaturase using linoleic acid (LA, C18:2 ${\Delta}^{9,12}$) as a substrate. To enable the production of GLA in the conventional yeast Pichia pastoris, we have isolated a cDNA encoding the delta-6 fatty acid desaturase from Cunninghamella echinulata MIAN6 and confirmed its function by heterogeneous expression in P. pastoris. Sequence analysis indicated that this cDNA sequence has an open reading frame of 1,404 bp, which encodes a 52 kDa peptide of 468 amino acids. This sequence has 64% identity to the previously reported delta-6 fatty acid desaturase from Rhizopus oryzae. The polypeptide has a cytochrome b5 domain at the N-terminus including the HPGG motif in the heme-binding region, as reported for other delta-6 fatty acid desaturases. In addition, this enzyme differs from other desaturases by the presence of three possible N-linked glycosylation sites. Analysis of the fatty acid composition demonstrated the accumulation of GLA to the level of 3.1% of the total fatty acids. Notably, the amounts of ginkgolic acid (C17:1) and palmitic acid (C16:0) were increased from 1.3% to 29.6% and from 15% to 33%, respectively. These results reveal that the modification of the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway by genetic manipulation in order to produce specific polyunsaturated fatty acids in P. pastoris is a promising technique.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.461-468
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• 2016

In recent years, various naturally occurring defence peptides such as plectasin have attracted considerable research interest because they could serve as alternatives to antibiotics. However, the production of plectasin from natural microorganisms is still not commercially feasible because of its low expression levels and weak stability. A tandemly arrayed plectasin gene (1,002 bp) from Pseudoplectania nigrella was generated using the isoschizomer construction method, and was inserted into the pPICZαA vector and expressed in Pichia pastoris. The selected P. pastoris strain yielded 143 μg/ml recombinant plectasin (Ple) under the control of the methanol-inducible alcohol oxidase 1 (AOX1) promoter. Ple was estimated by SDS-PAGE to be 41 kDa. In vitro studies have shown that Ple efficiently inhibited the growth of several gram-positive bacteria such as Streptococcus suis and Staphylococcus aureus. S. suis is the most sensitive bacterial species to Ple, with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 4 μg/ml. Importantly, Ple exhibited resistance to pepsin but it was quite sensitive to trypsin and maintained antimicrobial activity over a wide pH range (pH 2.0 to 10.0). P. pastoris offers an attractive system for the cost-effective production of Ple. The antimicrobial activity of Ple suggested that it could be a potential alternative to antibiotics against S. suis and S. aureus infections.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.1197-1205
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• 2013

Urokinase (uPA) and its receptor (uPAR) play an important role in tumor growth and metastasis. Targeting the excessive activation of this system as well as the proliferation of the tumor vascular endothelial cell would be expected to prevent tumor neovasculature and halt the tumor development. In this regard, the amino-terminal fragment (ATF) of urokinase has been confirmed as effective to inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasiveness of cancer cells via interrupting the interaction of uPA and uPAR. Previous studies indicated that ATF expressed in Escherichia coli was mainly contained in inclusion bodies and also lacked posttranslational modifications. In this study, the biologically active and soluble ATF was cloned and expressed in Pichia pastoris. The recombinant protein was purified to be homogenous and confirmed to be biologically active. The yield of the active ATF was about 30 mg/l of the P. pastoris culture medium. The recombinant ATF (rATF) could efficiently inhibit angiogenesis, endothelial cell migration, and tumor cell invasion in vitro. Furthermore, it could inhibit in vivo xenograft tumor growth and prolong the survival of tumor-bearing mice significantly by competing with uPA for binding to cell surfaces. Therefore, P. pastoris is a highly efficient and cost-effective expression system for large-scale production of biologically active rATFs for potential therapeutic application.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.47-52
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• 2010

The Malassezia fungi are responsible for various human skin disorders including dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis. Of the Malassezia fungi, Malassezia globosa (M. globosa) is one of the most common in human scalp. The completed genome sequence of M. globosa contains four putative cytochrome P450 genes. To determine the roles of Malassezia P450 enzymes in the biosynthesis of ergosterol, we isolated MGL3996 gene from M. globosa chromosomal DNA by PCR. The MGL3996 gene encodes an enzyme of 616 amino acids, which shows strong similarity with known CYP52s of other species. MGL3996 gene was cloned and expressed in Pichia pastoris (P. pastoris) heterologous yeast expression system. Using the yeast microsomes expressing MGL3996 protein, a typical P450 CO-difference spectrum was shown with absorption maximum at 448 nm. SDS-PAGE analysis revealed a protein band of apparent molecular weight 69 kDa and Western blot with anti-histidine tag antibody showed that MGL3996 was successfully expressed in P. pastoris. Cloning and expression of a new P450 gene is an important step to study the P450 monooxygenase system of M. globosa and to understand the role of P450 enzymes in pathophysiology of dandruff.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.304-311
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• 2020

Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) are prebiotics that have a beneficial effect on human health by promoting the growth of probiotic bacteria in the gut, in addition to having various applications in the food industry. GOS are generally produced from lactose in a reaction catalyzed by β-galactosidase. Synthesis of GOS from whey permeate (WP) (ultrafiltration of whey, concentrated then spray dried) using surface engineered β-galactosidase in Pichia pastoris (P. pastoris) is a novel method to convert waste into a valuable product. Cell-surface display is the expression of peptides and proteins on the surface of living cells by fusing them to functional components of cells. Surface engineered cells have many potential uses. The Flo1p flocculation functional domain, thought to be located near the N terminus, recognizes and adheres non-covalently to cell-wall components such as α-mannan carbohydrates, causing reversible aggregation of cells into flocs.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.2057-2063
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• 2018

Laccases can oxidize a variety of phenolic and non-phenolic substrates including synthetic dyes. In this research, a laccase gene Lcc9 from Laccaria bicolor was chemically synthesized and optimized to heterogeneous expression in Pichia pastoris and Arabidopsis thaliana. The properties of recombinant laccase expressed by P. pastoris were investigated. The laccase activity was optimal at 3.6 pH and $40^{\circ}C$. It exhibited $K_m$ and $V_{max}$ values of $0.565mmol\;l^{-1}$ and $1.51{\mu}mol\;l^{-1}\;min^{-1}$ for ABTS respectively. As compared with untransformed control plants, the laccase activity in crude extracts of transgenic lines exhibited a 5.4 to 12.4-fold increase. Both laccases expressed in transgenic P. pastoris or A. thaliana could decolorize crystal violet. These results indicated that L. bicolor laccase gene may be transgenically exploited in fungi or plants for dye decolorization.