The YeastFab project aims to construct the first comprehensive library of standardised and well-characterised biological parts (promoters, open-reading frames and terminators) for the Saccharomyces cerevisiae chasis. Our group along with researchers at the Dai laboratory at Tsinghua university (China) are working to domesticate over 6,000 promoters, ORFs and terminators to the YeastFab standard using high throughput biology and automation. The promoters and terminators are subsequently characterised by flow cytometry to determine their activity both in normal and stress conditions including; oxidative stress (H2O2), heat (37℃) and nutrient starvation (in medium lacking glucose, nitrogen starvation or in water). We have also devised a golden gate-based YeastFab assembly strategy that enables the rapid and cost-effective assembly of pathways. Not only does this enable assembly of pathways within a week but it is also scalable and enables combinatorial assembly of parts. We expect that through standardisation of parts, this will reduce the time and cost of yeast metabolic engineering thus accelerating the iterations of the Design-Build-Test cycle for heterologous expression of pathways.
