New Plasmid Constructs for Production of Yeast Based Oral Vaccines

Abstract

In order to avoid conventional vaccines, there is an urgent need to look for new ways of vaccine generation that can cut down the cost, time, and the need for special requirements during storage and distribution. The development of oral peptide/protein-based vaccines could be an ideal alternative. Five expression plasmids are designed in this work for the production of Saccharomyces cerevisiae-based oral vaccines.  Therefore, in this work genetic cassette with different organizations of the required genetic components for efficient gene expression is constructed in the pYES2 plasmid.  The construction of five new plasmids for surface display of heterologous recombinant proteins in S. cerevisiae would enable easy insertion of the gene of interest into an optimized genetic cassette consisting of a strong host promoter GAL1, HA-tag for detection of recombinant enzymes, GAS1 gene with/without binding sequence coded for GAS1 cell wall protein and signal sequence for directing the protein into the secretory pathway. After the construction of the genetic cassettes, E gene coded for envelope protein of Chikungunya and Dengue virus is inserted in the genetic cassettes. Genetic models pYES2HAGAS1EgeneChikungunya, pYES2HAGAS1 Egene Dengue, pYES2GAS1 Egene ChikungunyaHA, and pYES2GAS1EGeneDengueHA are constructed with different genetic organizations to display envelope protein of Chikungunya and Dengue virus in the cell surface of S. cerevisiae. In the pYES2SignalEGeneDengueHA construction, envelope protein will be secreted by S. cerevisiae into the media. The constructed vectors are specialized to regulate the expression and surface display of heterologous recombinant proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and will be suitable for large-scale oral vaccine production.