Question

An advantage of using Saccharomyces cerevisiae over Escherichia coli to produce a human protein is that

it will be more likely to continuously secrete the protein.
it can be engineered to produce human proteins unlike E. coli.
it has a genome only 4 times larger than E. coli.
its genome is well understood unlike E. coli.
it will be less likely to express the protein.

Answer 1

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is preferred over Escherichia coli for producing human proteins because it is a eukaryotic organism capable of post-translationally modifying proteins similarly to human cells, which is crucial for the function and stability of many proteins.

Step-by-step explanation:

An advantage of using Saccharomyces cerevisiae over Escherichia coli to produce a human protein is that S. cerevisiae, being a eukaryotic organism, can modify proteins in a manner more similar to human cells. Unlike E. coli, S. cerevisiae has the internal membrane structures and enzymes required to post-translationally modify proteins, such as glycosylation, which are important for the function and stability of many human proteins.

Since S. cerevisiae is a eukaryote and E. coli is a prokaryote, the yeast can correctly fold and modify many complex human proteins that bacteria cannot. Yeast cells can also be used to produce recombinant DNA and are a better choice for the expression of certain proteins that require eukaryotic post-translational modifications.

Furthermore, engineered yeast strains can be designed to secrete the recombinant protein into the culture medium, which can simplify the purification process. This is because the naturally secreted proteins are in a less complex medium compared to the cell's lysate, where intracellularly expressed proteins would need to be extracted from.