New yeast engineering tool could accelerate the bioeconomy

Australian scientists have developed a new genetic engineering tool that may make it much faster and cheaper to modify yeast, the workhorse behind many biomanufactured products.  

Yeast is used to make proteins, biofuels, medicines, industrial chemicals, bioplastics and food ingredients.   

Building improved yeast strains is often slow, labour-intensive and expensive. This new tool, called RAIN (Random Assembly and INtegration) is intended to allow researchers to assemble and insert multiple DNA parts simultaneously, generating many different yeast strains in a single experiment. This can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with genetic engineering projects. 

The work is described in a new paper published in FEMS Yeast Research.

‘The traditional method is like building one Lego model at a time,’ says co-lead author Dr Fergus Harrison, from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology Macquarie University. ‘Researchers may need to test hundreds or thousands of genetic combinations before finding one that works well.  RAIN is like shaking a box of Lego pieces and instantly creating hundreds of different models to see which one performs best.’ 

 ‘This research contributes to the ongoing efforts to develop multiplex genome engineering technologies in industrial yeast. Hopefully, in the future, these methods can reduce the cost of strain engineering, speed up synthetic biology research and help companies produce commercial products faster’ says co-lead author and PhD candidate Philip Kelso.

‘The RAIN project is just one of many projects being undertaken at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology aimed at developing new technology to support the future of biomanufacturing and the bioeconomy. With the continued efforts of the Centre’s dedicated team, the global bio-future looks bright!’