Z. Petek Cakar

By Burcu Turanli-Yildiz, Ceren Alkim and Z. Petek Cakar

Part of the book: Protein Engineering

By Burcu Turanlı-Yıldız, Burcu Hacısalihoğlu and Z. Petek Çakar

Sustainable production of chemicals is of increasing importance, due to depletion of petroleum and environmental concerns. In addition to its importance in basic research as a simple, eukaryotic model organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae has long been exploited in industry because of its physiological properties. And today, the development in genetic engineering toolbox and genome-scale metabolic models of S. cerevisiae has extended its application range to new products and bioprocesses. In addition, evolutionary engineering strategies have been useful in improving cellular properties of S. cerevisiae, such as tolerance to product toxicity and inhibitors. In this chapter, recent metabolic and evolutionary engineering studies that involve S. cerevisiae for the production of bulk chemicals and fine chemicals including flavours and pharmaceuticals are reviewed. It was shown that metabolic engineering particularly allowed the improvement of pharmaceuticals production, which will enable economic and large-scale production of many valuable pharmaceuticals. It is clear that S. cerevisiae will continue to be an important host for future metabolic engineering and metabolic pathway engineering applications to produce a variety of industrially and clinically important chemicals.

Part of the book: Old Yeasts