Dissection and enhancement of prebiotic properties of yeast cell wall oligosaccharides through metabolic engineering.

Saccharomyces boulardii is a yeast clinically used for treating various symptoms of gastrointestinal dysbiosis. Despite their genomic relatedness, S. boulardii has a distinctive cell wall oligosaccharide composition compared to baker's yeast S. cerevisiae, such as higher mannan content. Here we explore the beneficial effects of S. boulardii cell wall oligosaccharides through metabolic engineering. We increased the production of guanosine diphosphate (GDP)-mannose, the substrate for cell wall mannan biosynthesis, by perturbing glycolysis flux and overexpressing the enzymes in the GDP-mannose biosynthesis pathway. Combined with overexpression of a cell wall mannoprotein and dolichol phosphate mannose synthase, the cell wall mannan content of S. boulardii increased up to 52%. The identical engineering resulted in marginal changes in the S. cerevisiae cell wall. S. boulardii showed a higher adhesive capacity against Salmonella enterica Typhimurium than S. cerevisiae, and yeast-bacteria sedimentation rates were positively correlated with cell wall mannan contents. Besides, S. boulardii biomass selectively proliferated Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron over Clostridioides difficile more efficiently than S. cerevisiae, and the selectivity was further enhanced by amplifying the cell wall mannan. Collectively, we report the important prebiotic roles of cell wall oligosaccharides in the protective functions of S. boulardii and present a unique metabolic engineering approach to modulate the functions.

Biosynthesis of a Functional Human Milk Oligosaccharide, 2'-Fucosyllactose, and l-Fucose Using Engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

2'-fucosyllactose (2-FL), one of the most abundant human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), has received much attention due to its health-promoting activities, such as stimulating the growth of beneficial gut microorganisms, inhibiting pathogen infection, and enhancing the host immune system. Consequently, large quantities of 2-FL are on demand for food applications as well as in-depth investigation of its biological properties. Biosynthesis of 2-FL has been attempted primarily in Escherichia coli, which might not be the best option to produce food and cosmetic ingredients due to the presence of endotoxins on the cell surface. In this study, an alternative route to produce 2-FL via a de novo pathway using a food-grade microorganism,  Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been devised. Specifically, heterologous genes, which are necessary to achieve the production of 2-FL from a mixture of glucose and lactose, were introduced into S. cerevisiae. When the lactose transporter (Lac12), de novo GDP-l-fucose pathway (consisting of GDP-d-mannose-4,6-dehydratase (Gmd) and GDP-4-keto-6-deoxymannose-3,5-epimerase-4-reductase (WcaG)), and α1,2-fucosyltransferase (FucT2) were introduced, the resulting engineered strain (D452L-gwf) produced 0.51 g/L of 2-FL from a batch fermentation. In addition, 0.41 g/L of l-fucose was produced when α-l-fucosidase was additionally expressed in the 2-FL producing strain (D452L-gwf). To our knowledge, this is the first report of 2-FL and l-fucose production in engineered S. cerevisiae via the de novo pathway. This study provides the possibility of producing HMOs by a food-grade microorganism S. cerevisiae and paves the way for more HMO production in the future.