Landes Highlights

Saccharomyces boulardii is a probiotic yeast related to Saccharomyces cerevisiae but with distinct genetic, taxonomic, and metabolic properties. S. cerevisiae has been used extensively in biotechnological applications. a variety of strains are available, and multiple genetic tools have been developed, allowing the expression of exogenous proteins of interest with applications in the fields of medicine, biofuels, the food industry, and scientific research, among others. S. boulardii has been widely studied due to its probiotic properties against several gastrointestinal tract disorders, but very few studies have addressed the use of this yeast as a vector for expression of foreign genes of interest with biotechnological applications. in a recent study, dr Bruno douradinha and colleagues showed that despite the similarity of the two yeasts, not all genetic tools used in S. cerevisiae can be applied in S. boulardii. While transformation of the latter could be obtained using a commercial kit developed for the Genetic transformation of the probiotic yeast Saccharomyces boulardii