Uncoupling protein production from growth: different strategies for intracellular and secreted proteins in yeast.

backgroundPrecision fermentation offers a sustainable alternative production route for proteins but still suffers from moderate productivities and low yields. Especially compared to biomass yields, recombinant protein yields on substrate are very low. Uncoupling recombinant protein production from growth would allow higher product yields, but requires that productivity is maintained. So far, two-phase production processes mostly rely on inducers to activate recombinant protein production after an initial growth phase, e.g., a change in carbon source. On large scale, specific growth rates can be controlled by nutrient availability, and we aim to use this as trigger to uncouple recombinant protein production from growth.

resultsWe investigated the correlation between low specific growth rates (0.02 h

conclusionOur results demonstrate that promoter selection plays a critical role in production performance under slow growing conditions. Moreover, it highlights that optimising intracellular and extracellular recombinant protein production requires distinct, strategy-specific approaches.