Prediction of strain engineerings that amplify recombinant protein secretion through the machine learning approach MaLPHAS.

This article presents a discussion of the process of precision fermentation (PF), describing the history of the space, the expected 70% growth over the next 5 years, various applications of precision fermented products, and the markets available to be disrupted by the technology. A range of prokaryotic and eukaryotic host organisms used for PF are described, with the advantages, disadvantages and applications of each. The process of setting up PF and strain engineering is described, as well as various ways that computational analysis and design techniques can be employed to assist PF engineering. The article then describes the design and implementation of a machine learning method, machine learning predictions having amplified secretion (MaLPHAS) to predict strain engineerings, which optimise the secretion of a recombinant protein. This approach showed an in silico cross-validated R 2 accuracy on the training data of up to 46.6% and in an in vitro test on a Komagataella phaffii strain, identified one gene engineering out of five predicted, which was shown to double the secretion of a heterologous protein and outperform three of the best-known edits from the literature for improving secretion in K. phaffii .