Construction of a new plasmid for surface display on cells of Yarrowia lipolytica

In this study, a new surface display plasmid (pINA1317-YlCWP110) was constructed in Yarrowia lipolytica using C-terminal anchor domain of YlCWP1 from Y. lipolytica based on plasmid pINA1317, a pre-existing auto-cloning system for heterologous protein production in Y. lipolytica. When the genes encoding enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and haemolysin derived from the bacterium Vibrio harveyi were cloned into the newly constructed surface display plasmid, respectively, and expressed in cells of Y. lipolytica, we found that the target proteins were successfully displayed on the yeast cells and 100% of the yeast cell had anchoring target proteins. It was also shown that the yeast cells displaying haemolysin had haemolytic activity towards erythrocytes from flounder, indicating that the fusion protein remained functional. Therefore, the newly constructed surface display plasmid will have many applications in different fields such as in immobilized biocatalyst, bioconversion, bioremediation, live vaccine development and ultra-high-throughput screening for the identification of novel biocatalysts because it has many unique characteristics. To our knowledge, this work constitutes the first report of a surface display expression system in Y. lipolytica.