Metabolic Engineering of Yeast

This chapter focuses on a few examples that can serve as illustrations of how powerful yeast metabolic engineering stands today. Yeast, especially S. cerevisiae, plays an essential role in bioethanol production. Rapid ethanol production by yeast cells makes the fermentation process less susceptible to contamination. Higher alcohols are attractive due to some advantages compared with bioethanol, such as higher energy density, better blending into gasoline, higher octane value, lower hygroscopicity, and less corrosivity. The ethanol production process in the industry is mainly achieved through simultaneous saccharification and fermentation. Production of insulin, by volume the largest pharmaceutical protein produced, has paved the way for a wide use of S. cerevisiae for production of recombinant proteins. Virus like particles are proteins of virus capsid, which are produced by recombinant DNA technology and are important for the development of viral vaccines as they can self-assemble and display similar immunogenic properties as native viruses.