Development of a biotechnology platform for enzymatic sulfation of industrial products based on polysaccharide sulfotransferases

各种各样的家用产品，如食品、清洁材料和个人护理产品，都依赖于在工业规模上改性原材料以产生具有所需性质的产品的能力。在许多情况下，一个关键的要求是引入带电基团，以赋予所需的特性，如胶凝能力，结合其他材料或表现为洗涤剂。这通常可以通过添加带电基团来实现，其中一个关键方法是添加硫酸根基团。问题是，这是目前使用有毒和破坏环境的化学品。这种家用产品的全球市场是巨大的，并且正在增长，例如，个人护理产品的市场规模为73.5亿美元，年增长率为7%。我们的工业合作伙伴联合利华与我们有着长期而良好的合作关系，是全球主要的参与者，拥有约50%的市场份额。 消费者对环境问题的敏感性，特别是对现有的基于石油的产品和使用刺激性化学品的敏感性，这是由于它们对生物降解的抗性、温室气体的产生以及在它们的生产或处置期间的其他环境问题，已经导致开发可持续替代品的商业压力。涉及表现出差的选择性并且对环境有害的侵蚀性化学品，需要用使用可再生资源而不损害环境的化学品来代替。我们与联合利华合作，旨在开发使用酶实现硫酸化的方法，从而避免这些问题。我们提出的路线-工程酶进行这种修饰-既提供了更好的控制过程，而且至关重要的是，能够对环境负责地生产可生物降解的产品和废物。到目前为止，酶在这些领域的应用一直受到容易检测已经进行的修饰的问题的阻碍，并且由于所涉及的一些材料的成本，还受到开发商业上可行的添加硫酸根基团的方法的问题的阻碍。然而，现在，由于我们和联合利华进行的前期工作的结合，以及其他技术的进步，这两个问题都可以解决。该项目将利用这些改进的技术，以及我们在酶生产方面的专业知识，以实现两个主要目标：（一）技术集成（称为高通量酶工程平台），利用该平台生产和优化将适合于应用于工业相关的广泛的酶驱动过程的酶，（ii）说明使用该平台来选择和优化合适的酶，使用一类可以将硫酸酯基团添加到天然存在的和可再生的起始材料（例如来自植物的复合糖（多糖）和脂质（糖脂））的酶。这些硫酸化产品的工业应用潜力将由联合利华进行评估，联合利华是一家拥有成熟可持续发展议程的大型全球公司，未来将能够提供清洁，可再生产品。

A wide range of household products as diverse as foodstuffs, cleaning materials and personal care products, rely on the ability to modify starting materials on an industrial scale to generate products with the desired properties. One key requirement in many cases is the introduction of charged groups, to bestow the desired characteristics such as the ability to gel, to bind other materials or to behave as detergents. This can often be achieved by the addition of charged groups and one key way to do this is to add a sulfate group. The problem is that this is done currently using toxic and environmentally damaging chemicals. The global market for such household products is huge and growing, for example, for personal care products is $ 7.35 Bn with annual growth of 7%. Our industrial collaborator, Unilever, with whom we have a long and well-established working relationship, is a major global player, with around 50% of the market share. Consumer sensitivity to environmental concerns, particularly with existing petroleum-based products and the use of harsh chemicals, arising from their resistance to biological degradation, the generation of greenhouse gases and other environmental issues during their production or disposal, has culminated in commercial pressure to develop sustainable alternatives.The current method of achieving sulfation industrially, involving aggressive chemicals which show poor selectivity and are environmentally damaging, needs to be replaced with a one employing renewable resources without damaging the environment. Together with Unilever, we aim to develop methods by which sulfation can be achieved using enzymes, thereby avoiding these problems. The route we propose - engineering enzymes to carry out this modification - offers both better control of the process and, crucially, enables environmentally responsible production of biodegradable products and waste. Until now, the application of enzymes to these areas has been hindered by the problems of readily detecting the modifications that have been made and, owing to the cost of some of the materials involved, also of developing a commercially feasible method of adding sulfate groups. Now, however, as a result the combination of preliminary work carried out by ourselves and Unilever, as well as other technological advances, both of these problems can be solved. This project will exploit these improved technologies, together with our established expertise in enzyme production to achieve two principal aims: (i) to assemble the technology (termed the high throughput enzyme-engineering platform) with which to produce and optimise enzymes that will be suitable for application to a wide range of enzyme-driven processes of industrial relevance and, (ii) to illustrate the use of this platform to select and optimise suitable enzymes, using a class of enzymes that can add sulfate groups to naturally-occurring and renewable starting materials such as complex sugars (polysaccharides) and lipids (glycolipids) from plants. The potential for industrial application of these sulfated products will then be assessed by Unilever, a major global company with a developed sustainability agenda that, in the future, will enable delivery of clean, renewable products.