Development of surface displaying system for heterologous protein expression in Candida tropicalis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential application of cell surface display in Candida tropicalis. Surface display gene cassettes were constructed using five anchoring proteins from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, three of which [(suppression of exponential defect protein, SED1), (cell wall protein 2, CWP2) and (delayed anaerobic protein 4, DAN4)] were reported to show higher activity of heterologous proteins than α-agglutinin (AGα1). The performance of yeast-enhanced green fluorescent protein (yeGFP) was evaluated using laser scanning confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. The results showed that the three anchoring regions (SED1, CWP2 and AGα1) successfully displayed yeGFP on the cell wall. To investigate the effect of the three anchoring proteins on the surface display of Rhizopus oryzae α-amylase (ROA1) and Aspergillus aculeatus β-glucosidase (BGL1) in C. tropicalis, we constructed surface display gene cassettes for ROA1 and BGL1, respectively. The strains containing the anchoring proteins SED1 and CWP2 showed higher activity of ROA1 and BGL1 than the strains containing the anchoring protein AGα1. The highest ROA1 and BGL1 activities of strains with SED1 were 6.37 U/g CDW and 7.93 U/g CDW, respectively, which were sixfold and eightfold higher than those of strain with AGα1. In addition, we also optimized signal peptides. The results indicated that signal peptides have an impact on enzyme activity.