Pichia pastoris as a Versatile Cell Factory for the Production of Industrial Enzymes and Chemicals: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

With nearly three decades of development, Pichia pastoris (P. pastoris) has become a powerful eukaryotic protein expression system for the expression of thousands of proteins both on a laboratory and industrial scale. In addition, it has also been extensively used as a cell factory for the production of a variety of chemicals. This review summarizes the bottlenecks and solutions in achieving high-level secretory protein expression with P. pastoris and then outlines its applications on chemical production with an emphasis on its role as whole-cell biocatalyst. Furthermore, current challenges and future directions of this important system are also discussed.

Keywords: Pichia pastoris; biotransformation; protein expression; synthetic biology; whole-cell catalysis.