Abstract
Heterologous protein production in the yeast Pichia pastoris can be limited by biological responses to high expression levels; the unfolded protein response (UPR) is a key determinant of the success of protein production in this organism. Here, we used untargeted NMR metabolic profiling (metabolomics) of a number of different recombinant strains, carried out in a miniaturized format suitable for screening-level experiments. We identified a number of metabolites (from both cell extracts and supernatants) which correlated well with UPR-relevant gene transcripts, and so could be potential biomarkers for future high-throughput screening of large numbers of P. pastoris clones.