Effects of signal peptides on the secreted green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression by recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Recombinant proteins secreted by Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been widely applied in the food industry and biopharmaceuticals because of their valuable features. However, low-secreted protein production in S. cerevisiae is a pending challenge that has hampered applications based on S. cerevisiae. To improve the secreted protein expression in S. cerevisiae, it is important to develop an efficient cassette for the secretory expression of recombinant protein by S. cerevisiae.In this study, three cassettes were constructed in which a gene of interest was fused with genes coding for secretory signal peptides from AGA2, MFa and a-glucoamylase. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) was employed as a model protein to investigate the secretion of recombinant protein mediated by these signal peptides in S. cerevisiae. The secreted expression of GFP was detected by Western Blot and dot-blot analyses using a specific antibody against GFP which showed the strongest GFP levels from MFa signal-related cassette. Therefore, their cassettes could be employed for following studies on the secretion of some other proteins.