Gateway™ pYES-DEST52 Vector - FAQs

pYES-DEST52 (Cat. No. 12286019) is the only yeast expression vector we offer that is Gateway-compatible. It is designed for high-level, galactose-inducible expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We offer the original Pichia pastoris expression systems, PichiaPink expression system, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast expression system for expression of recombinant proteins. Both P. pastoris and S. cerevisiae have been genetically well-characterized and are known to perform many posttranslational modifications.

The P. pastoris expression system combines the benefits of expression in E. coli (high-level expression, easy scale-up, and inexpensive growth) and the advantages of expression in a eukaryotic system (protein processing, folding, and posttranslational modifications), thus allowing high-level production of functionally active recombinant protein. As a yeast, Pichia pastoris shares the advantages of molecular and genetic manipulations with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and it has the added advantage of 10- to 100-fold higher heterologous protein expression levels. These features make Pichia pastoris very useful as a protein expression system. The Pichia expression vectors contain either the powerful alcohol oxidase (AOX1) promoter for high-level, tightly controlled expression, or the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAP) promoter for high-level, constitutive expression. Both inducible and constitutive expression constructs integrate into the P. pastoris genome, creating a stable host that generates extremely high protein expression levels, particularly when used in a fermentor. The Pichia pastoris expression systems we offer include:

- PichiaPink Yeast Expression System: Newer Pichia pastoris expression system that contains both low- and high-copy plasmid backbones, 8 secretion signal sequences, and 4 yeast strains to help optimize for the highest yield possible of the recombinant protein. All PichiaPink vectors contain the AOX1 promoter for high-level, inducible expression and the ADE2 marker for selecting transformants using ADE2 complementation (i.e., by complementation of adenine auxotrophy) rather than antibiotic selection. However, they express the ADE2 gene product from promoters of different lengths, which dictate the copy number of the integrated plasmids. The pPink-LC vector has an 82 bp promoter for the ADE2marker and offers low-copy expression, and the pPink-HC vector has a 13 bp promoter for the ADE2marker and offers high-copy expression. The system also includes the pPinkalpha-HC vector (containing S. cerevisiae alpha-mating factor pre-sequence) for high copy number secreted expression, and provides eight secretion signal sequences for optimization of secreted expression.
- EasySelect Pichia Expression Kit: One of the original Pichia expression kits that contains the pPICZ and pPICZalpha vectors, for intracellular and secreted expression, respectively, of the gene of interest. These vectors contain the AOX1 promoter for high-level, inducible expression and the Zeocin antibiotic resistance marker for direct selection of multi-copy integrants. They facilitate simple subcloning, simple purification, and rapid detection of expressed proteins.
- Original Pichia Expression Kit: The kit includes the pPIC9, pPIC3.5, pHIL-D2, and pHIL-S1 vectors, each of which carries the AOX1 promoter for high-level, inducible expression and the HIS4 gene for selection in his4 strains, on histidine-deficient medium. pPIC9 carries the S. cerevisiae alpha-factor secretion signal while pHIL-S1 carries the Pichia pastoris alkaline phosphatase signal sequence (PHO) to direct transport of the protein to the medium. pHIL-D2 and pPIC3.5 are designed for intracellular expression.
- Multi-Copy Pichia Expression Kit: This kit is designed to maximize expression and contains the pPIC3.5K, pPIC9K, and pAO815 vectors, which allow production and selection of Pichia strains that contain more than one copy of the gene of interest. They allow isolation and generation of multicopy inserts by in vivo methods (pPIC3.5K and pPIC9K) or in vitro methods (pAO815). All of these vectors contain the AOX1 promoter for high-level, inducible expression and the HIS4 gene for selection in his4 strains, on histidine-deficient medium. The pPIC9K vector directs secretion of expressed proteins while proteins expressed from pPIC3.5K and pAO815 remain intracellular. The pPIC9K and pPIC3.5K vectors carry the kanamycin resistance marker that confers resistance to Geneticin Reagent in Pichia. Spontaneous generation of multiple insertion events can be identified by resistance to increased levels of Geneticin Reagent. Pichia transformants are selected on histidine-deficient medium and screened for their level of resistance to Geneticin Reagent. The ability to grow in high concentrations of Geneticin indicates that multiple copies of the kanamycin resistance gene and the gene of interest are integrated into the genome.
- For expression in S. cerevisiae, we offer the pYES Vector Collection. Each pYES vector carries the promoter and enhancer sequences from the GAL1 gene for inducible expression. The GAL1 promoter is one of the most widely used yeast promoters because of its strong transcriptional activity upon induction with galactose. pYES vectors also carry the 2m origin and are episomally maintained in high copy numbers (10-40 copies per cell).

Yeast is a single-celled, eukaryotic organism that can grow quickly in defined media (doubling times are typically 2.5 hr in glucose-containing media) and is easier and less expensive to use for recombinant protein production than insect or mammalian cells (see table below). These positive attributes make yeast suitable for use in formats ranging from multi-well plates, shake flasks, and continuously stirred tank bioreactors to pilot plant and industrial-scale reactors.

The most commonly employed species in the laboratory are Saccharomyces cerevisiae (also known as Baker's or Brewer's yeast) and some methylotrophic yeasts of the Pichia genus. Both S. cerevisiae and P. pastoris have been genetically characterized and shown to perform the posttranslational disulphide bond formation and glycosylation that is crucial for the proper functioning of some recombinant proteins. However, it is important to note that yeast glycosylation does differ from that in mammalian cells: in S. cerevisiae, O-linked oligosaccharides contain only mannose moieties, whereas higher eukaryotic proteins have sialylated O-linked chains. Furthermore S. cerevisiae is known to hyperglycosylate N-linked sites, which can result in altered protein binding, activity, and potentially yield an altered immunogenic response in therapeutic applications. In P. pastoris, oligosaccharides are of much shorter chain length and a strain has been reported that can produce complex, terminally sialylated or “humanized” glycoproteins.

When attempting this protocol, we observed very low efficiencies (~10 colonies/plate). So just be aware that while technically possible, going directly into an LR reaction from a TOPO reaction is very inefficient and will result in a very low colony number, if any at all.

To attach a C-terminal tag to your gene of interest, the insert must lack its stop codon, and be in the correct reading frame for compatibility with our C-terminal tagged destination vectors. Again, TOPO adapted Gateway Entry vectors will automatically put the insert into the correct reading frame. If you do not want the C-terminal tag to be expressed, simply include a stop codon at the end of the insert that is in frame with the initial ATG.

Generally, you need to choose a destination vector before you design and clone your insert into the Entry vector. This will determine whether you need to include an initiating ATG or stop codon with your insert.

1) his3Δ1: Histidine requiring strain (from gene disruption) with a deletion in locus 1. The his3 denotes the disruption of the HIS3 gene. The Δ1 is a deletion that has been engineered to decrease the recombination between the incoming plasmid DNA and the chromosomal site.
2) leu2: Leucine requiring strain due to the disruption of the LEU2 gene.
3) trp1-289: Tryptophan requiring strain, developed from gene disruption and a further point mutation to decrease the recombination between the incoming plasmid DNA and the chromosomal site.
4) ura3-52: Uracil requiring.

For more detail on types and methods of gene disruption in yeast refer to METHODS IN ENZYMOLOGY Vol. 194.

There is a protocol in which all 4 primers mentioned above are in a single PCR reaction. You can find this protocol at in the following article: Quest vol. 1, Issue 2, 2004. https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/newsletters-and-journals/quest-archive.reg.in.html. The best ratio of the first gene-specific and the second attB primers was 1:10.

2. Protein Interaction Mapping in C. elegans Using Proteins Involved in Vulval Development. Science Jan 7th 2000; 287(5450), 116-122 Davy, A. et al.

3. A protein-protein interaction map of the Caenorhabditis elegans 26S proteosome. EMBO Reports (2001) 2 (9), p. 821-828. Walhout, A.J.M. and Vidal, M. (2001).

4. High-throughput Yeast Two-Hybrid Assays for Large-Scale Protein Interaction mapping. Methods: A Companion to Methods in Enzymology 24(3), pp.297-306

5. Large Scale Analysis of Protein Complexes Gavin, AC et al. Functional Organization of the Yeast Proteome by Systematic Analysis of Protein Complexes. Nature Jan 10th 2002, 415, p. 141-147.

6. Systematic subcellular localisation of proteins Simpson, J.C., Wellenreuther, R., Poustka, A., Pepperkok, R. and Wiemann, S.

7. Systematic subcellular localization of novel proteins identified by large-scale cDNA sequencing. EMBO Reports (2000) 1(3), pp. 287-292.

8. Protein-over expression and crystallography Evdokimov, A.G., Anderson, D.E., Routzahn, K.M. & Waugh, D.S.

9. Overproduction, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of YopM, an essential virulence factor extruded by the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. Acta Crystallography (2000) D56, 1676-1679.

10. Evdokimov, et al. Structure of the N-terminal domain of Yersinia pestis YopH at 2.0 A resolution. Acta Crystallographica D57, 793-799 (2001).

11. Lao, G. et al. Overexpression of Trehalose Synthase and Accumulation of Intracellular Trehalose in 293H and 293FTetR:Hyg Cells. Cryobiology 43(2):106-113 (2001).

12. High-throughput cloning and expression Albertha J. M. Walhout, Gary F. Temple, Michael A. Brasch, James L. Hartley, Monique A. Lorson, Sander Van Den Huevel, and Marc Vidal.

13. Gateway Recombinational Cloning: Application to the Cloning of Large Numbers of Open Reading Frames or ORFeomes. Methods in Enzymology, Vol. 328, 575-592.

14. Wiemann, S. et.al., Toward a Catalog of Human Genes and Proteins: Sequencing and Analysis of 500 Novel Complete Protein Coding Human cDNAs, Genome Research (March 2001) Vol. 11, Issue 3, pp.422-435

15. Reviewed in NATURE: Free Access to cDNA provides impetus to gene function work. 15 march 2001, p. 289. Generating directional cDNA libraries using recombination

16. Osamu Ohara and Gary F. Temple. Directional cDNA library construction assisted by the in vitro recombination reaction. Nucleic Acids Research 2001, Vol. 29, no. 4. RNA interference (RNAi)

17. Varsha Wesley, S. et al. Construct design for efficient, effective and highthroughput gene silencing in plants. The Plant Journal 27(6), 581-590 (2001). Generation of retroviral constructs

18. Loftus S K et al. Generation of RCAS vectors useful for functional genomic analyses. DNA Res 31;8(5):221 (2001).

19. James L. Hartley, Gary F. Temple and Michael A. Brasch. DNA Cloning Using In Vitro Site-Specific Recombination. Genome Research (2000) 10(11), pp. 1788-1795.

20. Reboul et al. Open-reading frame sequence tags (OSTs) support the existence of at least 17,300 genes in C. elegans. Nature Genetics 27(3):332-226 (2001).

21. Kneidinger, B. et al. Identification of two GDP-6-deoxy-D-lyxo-4-hexulose reductase synthesizing GDP-D-rhamnose in Aneurinibacillus thermoaerophilus L420-91T*. JBC 276(8) (2001).

The region within brackets is where the site is "cut" and replaced by the attB1-fragment sequence to make an attL1 site. The sequence GTACAAA is the overlap sequence present in all att1 sites and is always "cut" right before the first G.

The overlap sequence in attP2 sites is CTTGTAC and cut before C. This is attP2:
ACAGGTCACT AATACCATCT AAGTAGTTGA TTCATAGTGA CTGGATATGT TGTGTTTTAC AGTATTATGT AGTCTGTTTT TTATGCAAAA TCTAATTTAA TATATTGATA TTTATATCAT TTTACGTTTC TCGTTCAGCT TTCTTGTACA AAGTTGGCAT TATAAGAAAG CATTGCTTAT AATTTGTTG CAACGAACAG GTCACTATCA GTCAAAATAA AATCATTATT

So, attL1 (Entry Clone) should be:
A ATAATGATTT TATTTTGACT GATAGTGACC TGTTCGTTGC AACAAATTGA TGAGCAATGC TTTTTTATAA TGCCAACT TT G TAC AAA AAA GC[A GGC T]NN NNN

attL2 (Entry Clone) should be:
NNN N[AC C]CA GCT TT CTTGTACA AAGTTGGCAT TATAAGAAAG CATTGCTTAT CAATTTGTTG CAACGAACAG GTCACTATCA GTCAAAATAA AATCATTATT

The sequence in brackets comes from attB, and N is your gene-specific sequence.

Note: When creating an Entry Clone through the BP reaction and a PCR product, the vector backbone is not the same as Gateway Entry vectors. The backbone in the case of PCR BP cloning is pDONR201.

Effects on protein function: A researcher (Simpson et al. EMBO Reports 11(31):287-292, 2000) demonstrated that GFP fusions (N- terminal and C-terminal) localized to the proper intracellular compartment. The expression constructs were generated using Gateway cloning, so the recombinant protein contained the attB1 or attB2 amino acid sequence. The localization function of the cloned recombinant proteins was preserved.

Effects on expression: We have seen no effect of the attB sites on expression levels in E. coli, insect and mammalian cells. The gus gene was cloned into bacterial expression vectors (for native and N-terminal fusion protein expression) using standard cloning techniques and expressed in bacteria. Gus was also cloned into Gateway Destination vectors (for native and N-terminal fusion expression) and expressed. When protein expression is compared, there was no difference in the amount of protein produced. This demonstrates that for this particular case, the attB sites do not interfere with transcription or translation.

Effects on solubility: A researcher at the NCI has shown that Maltose Binding Protein fusions constructed with Gateway Cloning were soluble. The fusion proteins expressed had the attB amino acid sequence between the Maltose Binding Protein and the cloned protein. It is possible that some proteins containing the attB sequence could remain insoluble when expressed in E.coli.

Effects on folding: Two Hybrids screens show the same interacters identified with and without the attB sequence. Presumably correct protein folding would be required for protein-protein interactions to take place. It is possible that some proteins containing the attB sequence may not fold correctly.

The location of translation initiation sites, stop codons, or fusion tags for expression must be considered in your initial cloning design. For example, if your destination vector contains an N-terminal tag but does not have a C-terminal tag, the vector should already contain the appropriate translation start site but the stop codon should be included in your insert.

These enzymes are more stable than the original BP and LR Clonase and can be stored at -20 degrees C for 6 months.