Our project aims to improve the efficiency of the whole-cell biocatalyst based on yeast surface display system.

To start with, we anchored α- and β-tubulin, which are subunits of microtubules, on the cell walls of yeasts using the agglutinin system. Since microtubule self-assembly can take place outside the cell membrane, we shall provide the engineered yeasts with an environment rich of pre-secreted microtubule subunits. In this way, an extracellular tridimensional microtubule system could be formed. The next step is to attach enzymes on the microtubule system, which would significantly increase the capacity for yeast surface display of enzymes. As a result, a highly efficient whole-cell biocatalyst system will be developed.