Scientists Develop Rapid Way to Design Enzymes for Biomass Conversion

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have reported in the journal Molecular BioSystems the development of a chemical approach that can facilitate rapid development of enzyme blends for efficient conversion of plant biomass into fuels.

The PNNL study focused on a collection of enzymes produced by the fungus Trichoderma reesei, which can reduce the complex and tough plant structural material known as lignocellulose into fermentable sugars and eventually into fuels. As each enzyme attacks the lignocellulose differently, chemists are trying to combine the best ones to create a potent enzyme cocktail, which is a key to economically viable biomass-to-fuel conversion. To assess the effectiveness of the enzyme blend, scientists must either measure the overall performance of the mixture, or they must test the component enzymes one at a time to see how each reacts to different conditions like temperature, pressure and pH.

The PNNL team developed an activity-based protein profiling in which a chemical probe tracks precisely how each of dozens of enzymes reacts to changing conditions. This will allow  them to measure the activity of individual enzymes, as well as the overall mixture, in a single experiment. The chemical probe binds to the target enzymes and gives off information indicating just how active each of those enzymes is per time.

The new method potentially reduces the amount of work needed to develop efficient enzyme blends, which normally takes months, to only a day or two.