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Sweet spots for fungal lignocellulose degradation; elucidating the enzymatic mechanism underpinning interaction of Aspergillus niger with wheat straw

真菌木质纤维素降解的最佳点；

基本信息

批准号：
BB/P011462/1
负责人：
Jolanda Van Munster
金额：
$ 38.76万
依托单位：
University of Manchester
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2017
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2017 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FP011462%2F1
关键词：
Sweet spots fungal lignocellulose degradation

项目摘要

As efficient degraders of dead plant biomass, fungi are able to produce enzymes that can break down the complex of polysaccharides and lignin (together lignocellulose) comprising the plant cell wall, forming more simple sugars. This ability is exploited in biotechnology to release sugars from renewable resources such as wheat straw, which would otherwise be agricultural waste. These sugars are subsequently used to produce biofuels and high-value chemicals.In the last decade, our understanding of how fungi behave when encountering lignocellulose, and which enzymes they produce upon doing so has increased dramatically, especially for industrially important fungi such as Aspergillus niger. However, we have very limited understanding of how the activity of the fungal enzymes affects lignocellulose. This interdisciplinary project aims to study the biochemical mechanism underpinning the degradative effect of A. niger and its enzymes on a complex lignocellulose substrate, using state-of-the-art techniques novel to this field.When A. niger grows on lignocellulose, genes encoding polysaccharide-degradative enzymes are switched on consecutively. This suggests that the fungus sequentially secretes degradative enzymes, which deconstruct the lignocellulose to transiently expose individual polysaccharides. Via enzymatic degradation of these polysaccharides, soluble sugars are released that can act as signalling molecules to switch on expression of genes, resulting in sequential gene expression. This project investigates both the time-staged deconstruction of polysaccharides on the surface of the model lignocellulose wheat straw, as well as the degradative capacity of the enabling enzymatic machinery. State-of-the-art tools conventionally applied for the characterisation of material surfaces will be used here to show how polysaccharides are accessed by and exposed to fungal degradative enzymes. To characterise the fungal enzymes, a method that has recently been developed by us will be expanded to allow informative and fast screening of many different enzyme activities simultaneously. This method will be applied to characterise the activities of degradative enzymes produced by A. niger on wheat straw. This research will enhance our understanding of how the fungal enzymatic machinery interacts with and deconstructs lignocellulose, a prerequisite for exploitation of fungi as enzyme cell factories. Understanding gained by studying the regulatory and enzymatic aspects of A. niger lignocellulose deconstruction, as well as the broadly applicable tool set, can be applied to understand other uncharacterised species of fungi. Research will be executed by Dr Jolanda van Munster, a microbiologist and enzymologist, based in the Chemical Biology research group of Professor Sabine Flitsch, in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology of the University of Manchester. The surface analysis experiments will be done in the laboratory of Paul Knox, Professor of Plant Cell Biology in the Centre for Plant Sciences at the University of Leeds, and in the laboratory of Emma Master, Associate Professor in the Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry Department, at the University of Toronto, Canada.

作为死亡植物生物质的有效降解剂，真菌能够产生酶，该酶可以分解构成植物细胞壁的多糖和木质素（一起为木质纤维素）的复合物，形成更多的单糖。这种能力在生物技术中被利用，以从可再生资源（如小麦秸秆）中释放糖，否则这些资源将成为农业废物。这些糖随后被用于生产生物燃料和高价值的化学品。在过去的十年中，我们对真菌在遇到木质纤维素时的行为以及它们在这样做时产生的酶的理解急剧增加，特别是对于工业上重要的真菌，如尼日尔曲霉。然而，我们对真菌酶的活性如何影响木质纤维素的了解非常有限。本跨学科项目旨在研究生物降解作用的生化机制。尼日尔及其酶在复杂木质纤维素底物上的作用，使用该领域的最新技术。尼日尔生长在木质纤维素上，编码多糖降解酶的基因连续开启。这表明真菌依次分泌降解酶，其解构木质纤维素以瞬时暴露单个多糖。通过这些多糖的酶促降解，释放出可溶性糖，其可以充当信号分子以开启基因表达，从而导致顺序的基因表达。本项目研究了模型木质纤维素小麦秸秆表面多糖的时间阶段性解构，以及使能酶机械的降解能力。国家的最先进的工具，通常适用于材料表面的表征将在这里使用，以显示多糖是如何访问和暴露于真菌降解酶。为了筛选真菌酶，我们最近开发的一种方法将被扩展到允许同时提供信息和快速筛选许多不同的酶活性。该方法可用于测定A.小麦秸秆上的尼日尔这项研究将提高我们对真菌酶机制如何与木质纤维素相互作用和解构木质纤维素的理解，这是利用真菌作为酶细胞工厂的先决条件。通过研究A.尼日尔木质纤维素解构以及广泛适用的工具集可用于了解其他未表征的真菌物种。研究将由曼彻斯特大学曼彻斯特生物技术研究所Sabine Flitsch教授的化学生物学研究小组的微生物学家和酶学家Jolanda货车Munster博士执行。表面分析实验将在利兹大学植物科学中心植物细胞生物学教授Paul Knox的实验室和加拿大多伦多大学化学工程与应用化学系副教授Emma Master的实验室进行。