Effect of galactose feeding on the improved production of hirudin in fed-batch cultures of recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract

Different feeding strategies of galactose were employed to improve the production of anticoagulant, hirudin, by fed-batch mode of cultivation from recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The structural gene coding for hirudin was harboured with GAL10 promoter for controlled expression of hirudin and the MFα 1 signal sequence for secretion into the growth medium. A stepwise feeding of galactose was found as more suitable feeding strategy of galactose which resulted in the final hirudin volumetric productivity of 6,840 μg/l · h, than intermittent, continuous and ethanol controlled feeding of galactose. The final volumetric productivity of hirudin obtained by step-wise feeding of galactose was 3.88 fold higher compared with simple batch fermentation.