%A Li,Jia %A Shen,Jia %A Sun,Zhiqiang %A Li,Jing %A Li,Changfu %A Li,Xiaohua %A Zhang,Yansheng %D 2017 %J Frontiers in Microbiology %C %F %G English %K Did2,Saccharomyces cerevisiae.,β-carotene biosynthesis,Colony color screening,Novel amplifying targets %Q %R 10.3389/fmicb.2017.01116 %W %L %M %P %7 %8 2017-June-15 %9 Original Research %+ Yansheng Zhang,CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Wuhan, China,zhangys@wbgcas.cn %# %! Novel amplifying targets improving β-carotene production %* %< %T Discovery of Several Novel Targets that Enhance β-Carotene Production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae %U https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2017.01116 %V 8 %0 JOURNAL ARTICLE %@ 1664-302X %X β-Carotene is the precursor of vitamin A, and also exhibits multiple pharmaceutical functions by itself. In comparison to chemical synthesis, the production of β-carotene in microbes by metabolic engineering strategy is relatively inexpensive. Identifying genes enhancing β-carotene production in microbes is important for engineering a strain of producing higher yields of β-carotene. Most of previous efforts in identifying the gene targets have focused on the isoprenoid pathway where the β-carotene biosynthesis belongs. However, due to the complex interactions between metabolic fluxes, seemingly irrelevant genes that are outside the isoprenoid pathway might also affect β-carotene biosynthesis. To this end, here we provided an example that several novel gene targets, which are outside the isoprenoid pathway, have improving effects on β-carotene synthesis in yeast cells, when they were over-expressed. Among these targets, the class E protein of the vacuolar protein-sorting pathway (Did2) led to the highest improvement in β-carotene yields, which was 2.1-fold to that of the corresponding control. This improvement was further explained by the observation that the overexpression of the DID2 gene generally boosted the transcriptions of β-carotene pathway genes. The mechanism by which the other targets improve the production of β-carotene is discussed.