Yeast display technology is also called yeast surface display technology. This technology expresses exogenous proteins by fusing them with specific proteins on the yeast cell wall, such as lectin Aga2p, so that the exogenous proteins are anchored on the yeast cell surface in an active form to achieve the display of exogenous proteins. Yeast surface display technology can be combined with flow cytometry sorting technology to efficiently screen yeast strains that express target proteins, and can also quantitatively detect the dissociation kinetics of target proteins to improve the stability of target proteins.

Yeast display technology can efficiently screen, direct evolution and optimize the function of proteins. Yeast display technology can be used to study some substances related to unknown gene functions, help develop drugs, and screen antibody drugs. Yeast display technology can be used to directly display target enzymes on the surface of yeast cells, perform efficient catalysis and directed evolution of enzymes, and improve the efficiency and stability of biocatalysis. Biosensors designed based on yeast display technology have the advantages of high sensitivity, good selectivity, and strong stability, and are widely used in environmental monitoring, food safety testing and other fields.

Application of Yeast Display Technology:

Yeast cells are good cell surface display microorganisms. Many yeast cells have been used for yeast surface display, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris. Yeast display technology can be used for alcohol fermentation. Through yeast display technology, cellulose hydrolase can be displayed on the surface of yeast cells, thereby converting amorphous cellulose into ethanol, improving the efficiency and yield of alcohol fermentation. Yeast display technology can be used to screen disease-related proteins or antibodies, which is helpful for drug development. The sensitivity and specificity of serological detection methods based on yeast display technology are very high, and can be used in disease diagnosis, vaccine effect evaluation and other fields. Yeast display technology can also be applied to antigen surface display, vaccine development and other fields.

Principle of Yeast Display Technology:

Yeast display technology mainly uses the surface display system of yeast cells to fix and display exogenous proteins, and fuses exogenous proteins with specific vector gene sequences and introduces them into yeast cells. After that, through the protein transport mechanism, the fusion protein is guided to the surface of the yeast cell. Since the fusion protein contains a structure that anchors the yeast cell wall, the exogenous protein molecule can be fixed on the surface of the yeast cell. The common host cell of yeast display technology is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is sandwich-shaped, with an outer layer of mannan, an inner layer of glucan, and a layer of protein in the middle. This structure provides a good foundation for the anchoring of exogenous proteins, and because of its good safety, it is widely used in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Commonly used carrier proteins in yeast display technology include glycosylphosphatidylinositol family proteins and cell wall proteins. These proteins have specific anchoring signals that can anchor the fusion protein to the yeast cell wall. After the target protein is fused with the carrier protein, it can be displayed on the surface of the yeast cell.

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of yeast surface display technology

Depending on the different fusion sites of the exogenous target protein and the yeast cell wall protein, yeast display technology is divided into different types, including lectin display expression system and flocculin display expression system. The lectin display expression system mainly anchors the target protein on the cell wall through α-lectin, while the flocculin display expression system uses the flocculin gene to fuse with exogenous proteins and express the fusion protein on the cell surface.

Libraries that can be Constructed by the Yeast Display System:

The yeast display system can be used to construct a variety of yeast display libraries, including antibody libraries, peptide libraries, enzyme libraries, etc. Among them, the construction of antibody yeast display library is one of the most common library types in yeast display library construction. By cloning antibody gene fragments into yeast display vectors and fusing them with specific proteins on the surface of yeast cells, a large number of different antibody molecules can be displayed on the surface of yeast cells. Flow cytometry can be used for large-scale screening, and then antibody molecules with high affinity and high specificity can be quickly identified. A library composed of short peptides of various different sequences is called a peptide library. These peptides can be fused with proteins on the surface of yeast cells and then displayed on the surface of yeast cells. By screening the peptide library, peptide molecules with high affinity to specific targets can be identified, and then used for drug research and development. An enzyme library refers to a library composed of multiple enzyme genes. These enzyme genes can be cloned into yeast expression vectors and expressed in yeast cells. However, since enzymes usually require specific folding and modification to be active, the construction of enzyme libraries in yeast display systems is relatively complex. In addition, yeast display systems can also construct protein interaction libraries, cell surface receptor libraries, gene regulation libraries, etc.

TekBiotech is committed to providing customers with high-quality yeast display services. Based on yeast display technology, TekBiotech can provide customers with high-quality antibody yeast display library construction, including but not limited to single-chain antibody yeast display services such as VHH and scFv. The yeast library capacity can reach 10^8, and the library diversity, insertion rate, and positive rate can reach more than 90%, meeting the quality requirements of various customers for antibody yeast display libraries. At the same time, TekBiotech can also provide one-stop technical services such as downstream antibody in vitro validation (including but not limited to affinity validation, antibody blocking validation, cross-reaction validation and other downstream validation experiments) supporting antibody yeast display, antibody humanization, antibody affinity maturation, CAR-T/CAR-NK lead sequence design and cell killing validation. Customers only need to provide specific experimental requirements and target information. We can design and customize reasonable solutions according to customer needs to help customers' scientific research projects and drug antibody development.