Augmented peroxisomal ROS buffering capacity renders oxidative and thermal stress cross-tolerance in yeast.

BACKGROUND: Thermotolerant yeast has outstanding potential in industrial applications. Komagataella phaffii (Pichia pastoris) is a common cell factory for industrial production of heterologous proteins. RESULTS: Herein, we obtained a thermotolerant K. phaffii mutant G14 by mutagenesis and adaptive evolution. G14 exhibited oxidative and thermal stress cross-tolerance and high heterologous protein production efficiency. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) level and lipid peroxidation in G14 were reduced compared to the parent. Oxidative stress response (OSR) and heat shock response (HSR) are two major responses to thermal stress, but the activation of them was different in G14 and its parent. Compared with the parent, G14 acquired the better performance owing to its stronger OSR. Peroxisomes, as the main cellular site for cellular ROS generation and detoxification, had larger volume in G14 than the parent. And, the peroxisomal catalase activity and expression level in G14 was also higher than that of the parent. Excitingly, the gene knockdown of CAT encoding peroxisomal catalase by dCas9 severely reduced the oxidative and thermal stress cross-tolerance of G14. These results suggested that the augmented OSR was responsible for the oxidative and thermal stress cross-tolerance of G14. Nevertheless, OSR was not strong enough to protect the parent from thermal stress, even when HSR was initiated. Therefore, the parent cannot recover, thereby inducing the autophagy pathway and resulting in severe cell death. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate the importance of peroxisome and the significance of redox balance in thermotolerance of yeasts.

Oxidative stress tolerance contributes to heterologous protein production in Pichia pastoris.

BACKGROUND: Pichia pastoris (syn. Komagataella phaffii) is an important yeast system for heterologous protein expression. A robust P. pastoris mutant with oxidative and thermal stress cross-tolerance was acquired in our previous study. The robust mutant can express a 2.5-fold higher level of lipase than its wild type (WT) under methanol induction conditions. RESULTS: In this study, we found that the robust mutant not only can express a high level of lipase, but also can express a high level of other heterogeneous proteins (e.g., green fluorescence protein) under methanol induction conditions. Additionally, the intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels in the robust mutant were lower than that in the WT under methanol induction conditions. To figure out the difference of cellular response to methanol between the WT and the robust mutant, RNA-seq was detected and compared. The results of RNA-seq showed that the expression levels of genes related to antioxidant, MAPK pathway, ergosterol synthesis pathway, transcription factors, and the peroxisome pathway were upregulated in the robust mutant compared to the WT. The upregulation of these key pathways can improve the oxidative stress tolerance of strains and efficiently eliminate cellular ROS. Hence, we inferred that the high heterologous protein expression efficiency in the robust mutant may be due to its enhanced oxidative stress tolerance. Promisingly, we have indeed increased the expression level of lipase up to 1.6-fold by overexpressing antioxidant genes in P. pastoris. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated the impact of methanol on the expression levels of genes in P. pastoris and emphasized the contribution of oxidative stress tolerance on heterologous protein expression in P. pastoris. Our results shed light on the understanding of protein expression mechanism in P. pastoris and provided an idea for the rational construction of robust yeast with high expression ability.