Abstract:
The cyclization of 2, 3-oxidosqualene is the key branch point of ergosterol and triterpenoid biosynthesis. Downregulation of 2, 3-oxidosqualene metabolic flux to ergosterol in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae may redirect the metabolic flux toward the triterpenoid synthetic pathway. In our study, primers were designed according to
erg7 gene sequence of
S. cerevisiae. Three fragments including 5' long fragment, 5' short fragment and
erg7 coding region fragment were amplified by PCR. 5' long fragment consists of the promoter and a part of
erg7 coding region sequence. 5' short fragment consists of a part of promoter and a part of
erg7 coding region sequence. These fragments were inserted reversely into pESC-URA to construct antisense expression plasmids. The recombinant plasmids were transformed into
S. cerevisiae INVSc1 and recombinant strains were screened on the nutritional deficient medium SD-URA. The
erg7 expression level of recombinant strains, which harbored antisense expression plasmid of
erg7 coding region, was similar to that of INVSc1 by semi-quantitative PCR detection. But
erg7 expression level of recombinant strains, which harbored 5' long antisense fragment and 5' short antisense fragment, was significantly lower than that of the control. The results of TLC and HPLC showed that the ergosterol content of recombinant strains, which harbored 5' long antisense fragment, decreased obviously. The ergosterol contents of the others were almost equal to that of INVSc1. Lanosterol synthase gene expression was downregulated by antisense RNA technology in
S. cerevisiae, which lays a foundation for reconstructing triterpenoid metabolic pathway in
S. cerevisiae by synthetic biology technology.