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

各种各样的家庭产品，如食品、清洁材料和个人护理产品，都依赖于在工业规模上修改原料的能力，以产生具有所需性能的产品。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，如凝胶的能力，结合其他材料或作为洗涤剂的行为。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盐基团。问题是，这是目前使用有毒和破坏环境的化学品完成的。这类家居产品的全球市场巨大且不断增长，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和良好的工作关系，是一个主要的全球参与者，拥有大约50%的市场份额。消费者对环境问题的敏感，特别是对现有石油基产品和刺激性化学品的使用的敏感，是由于这些产品在生产或处置过程中对生物降解、温室气体的产生和其他环境问题的抵抗力所引起的，这最终导致商业压力要求发展可持续的替代品。目前工业上实现磺化的方法涉及选择性差和破坏环境的侵蚀性化学品，需要用不破坏环境的可再生资源取代。与联合利华一起，我们的目标是开发利用酶实现硫酸酸化的方法，从而避免这些问题。我们提出的途径——设计酶来进行这种修饰——既可以更好地控制过程，而且至关重要的是，可以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一些问题的阻碍，这些问题包括很难检测到已经进行的修饰，以及由于所涉及的一些材料的成本，以及开发一种商业上可行的添加硫酸盐基团的方法。然而，现在，由于我们和联合利华进行的前期工作，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，结合我们在酶生产方面的专业知识，实现两个主要目标：(i)组装技术（称为高通量酶工程平台），用于生产和优化适用于广泛的工业相关酶驱动过程的酶，（ii）说明使用该平台选择和优化合适的酶，使用一类酶，可以将硫酸盐基团添加到天然存在的可再生原料中，如植物中的复合糖（多糖）和脂类（糖脂）。这些硫酸盐产品的工业应用潜力将由联合利华（Unilever）进行评估。联合利华是一家大型全球性公司，拥有发达的可持续发展议程，未来将能够提供清洁、可再生的产品。

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.