Assembly and metabolic engineering of the biosynthesis of natural product pharmaceuticals in yeast

The rapid development of “Omics” technologies has accelerated the elucidation of complex biosynthetic pathway to rare natural product medicines, allowing the metabolic engineering of their production in alternative systems to provide sustainable production. As one of the simplest eukaryotes, yeast contains most of the cellular compartments and machinery for producing plant metabolites, while offering advantages such as fast growth and rich genetic and genomic tools for gene manipulation.
This project will use CRISPR/Cas9 technology to integrate the biosynthetic pathways leading to key precursors to two classes of natural products: monoterpenoid indole alkaloids and prenylated polyketides in baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), which will be further modified to enable the production of specific pharmaceuticals. The research will also optimize the production towards compounds of interest while also eliminate the consumption of intermediates by yeast metabolism, via a series of metabolic engineering approaches. The developed system will also be used to introduce additional enzymes that further modifies the compound of interest, which may lead to improved pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics.

Faculty Supervisor:

Yang Qu

Student:

Partner:

Tetra Bio-Pharma (NB)

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of New Brunswick

Program: