Construction of yeast strains expressing long-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and their therapeutic effects on type 2 diabetes mellitus mouse model

Abstract

Probiotics, i.e., bacteria expressing therapeutic peptides (protein), are used as a new type of orally administrated biologic drugs to treat diseases. To develop yeast strains which could effectively prevent and treat type 2 diabetes mellitus, we firstly constructed the yeast integrating plasmid pNK1-PGK which could successfully express green fluorescent protein (GFP) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The gene encoding ten tandem repeats of glucagon-like peptide-1(10 × GLP-1) was cloned into the vector pNK1-PGK and the resulting plasmids were then transformed into the S. cerevisiae INVSc1. The long-acting GLP-1 hypoglycemic yeast (LHY) which grows rapidly and expresses 10 × GLP-1 stably was selected by nutrition screening and Western blotting. The amount of 10 × GLP-1 produced by LHY reached 1.56 mg per gram of wet cells. Moreover, the oral administration of LHY significantly reduced blood glucose level in type 2 diabetic mice induced by streptozotocin plus high fat and high sugar diet.