Abstract

Establishing Saccharomyces Boulardii as an In-Gut Biomanufacturing Platform

Nathan Crook, Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

Saccharomyces boulardii is a widely used yeast probiotic, demonstrating effectiveness against various gastrointestinal disorders. S. boulardii is therefore a promising chassis for development of personalized engineered probiotic medicines. In this talk, I will discuss our lab’s recent progress in optimizing both small molecule and peptide biosynthesis in this strain, as well as our efforts to enhance S. boulardii’s in vivo residence time.  Last, I will discuss some new work from our lab focusing on the development of gut- and small-molecule inducible promoters for this organism. Taken together, this work establishes S. boulardii as a genetically tractable commensal fungus and demonstrates the delivery of therapeutics during colonization.