Molecular display technology using yeast--arming technology.

A technology to display proteins or peptides on living organisms has been developed over the last two decades. So-called "Molecular display (Arming) technology" or "Cell surface engineering" has been one of the important tools for analyzing and understanding protein function, or for screening of novel clones from libraries. In addition, it endows cells with novel abilities that cannot be added by conventional genetic recombination. In particular, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has a lot of advantages in molecular display technology. Normal yeast cells can be transformed into a wide variety of "arming yeasts" that have catalytic functions, affinity binding to valuable ligands, bioremediation properties, bio-monitoring properties, etc. This review describes the background, applications, and representative achievements of molecular display technology of yeast.