De novo biosynthesis of 2′-fucosyllactose in engineered Pichia pastoris

Purpose Pichia pastoris is well known for its ability to produce short and low-immunogenic humanized glycosyl chains onto recombinant glycoproteins, it was thus speculated to be applicable to synthesize oligosaccharides. In this study, generally recognized as safe (GRAS) microorganism Pichia pastoris GS115 was tested for its potential to be used as a new synthetic chassis to produce the most abundant human milk oligosaccharide 2 '-fucosyllactose (2 '-FL).Methods To enable the de novo synthesis of 2 '-FL, lactose transporter lac12, two enzymes of gmd, gmer, and fucosyltransferases futC were integrated into the genome of P. pastoris, under the control of constitutive PGAP promoter. Results The resulting recombinant yeasts yielded up to 0.276 g/L through culture optimization in a 5 L bioreactor.Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first report of 2 '-FL production in engineered Pichia pastoris. This work is a good starting point to produce 2 '-FL using Pichia pastoris as a viable chassis.