Heterologous expression of Fusarium pigments in S. cerevisiae

The biosynthetic pathway of the Fusarium pigments bikaverin (PKS16) and fusarubins (PKS3) are reconstructed utilizing a plasmid-based expression system and heterologously expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This system allows for a quick and easy assembly of biosynthetic pathways for pathway-metabolite linkage while simultaneously obtaining the target metabolite without other secondary metabolites, due to the simplistic secondary metabolism of the heterologous expression host. The application of heterologous expression allows for exploitation of the beneficial function of the target metabolite, without the concerns of malignant byproducts expressed by Fusarium sp. This allows for beneficial applications of the end-product such as novel drug discovery and expression in large scale industrial fermentation. The two biosynthetic pathways reconstructed in this study, functions as proof-of-concept that entire PKS-pathways can be expressed in S. cerevisiae and a visible phenotypic change occurs when translation is induced.