Hydrolase discovery in the extremophile Galdieria

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Galdieria is a red alga that exhibits metabolic versatility and displays enormous capacity to thriveat highly acidic conditions (down to pH 0) and temperatures above 55C, the theoretical limit ofeukaryotic life. Members in this genus display broad metabolic repertoires allowing vigorousgrowth on virtually any sugar, sugar-alcohol or organic-acid source and it is capable of bothphotoautotrophic and chemoheterotrophic growth. Galdieria is a metabolic workhorse. Theextremophile lifestyle of Galdieria makes it a fascinating organism to find those novel species withproperties that have industrial biotechnological (IB) applications. To exploit Galdieria for use in theIB sector, we must define the constellation of diversity in metabolic capacity it displays. In phase 1of this project, the student will perform phylogenomic discoveries of IB-relevant enzymes. Fromthere, annotation leads to a description of metabolic predictions using the innovative pipeline thatexploits genome-scale metabolic networks. In phase 2, informatic descriptions will be produced ofexcreted enzymes that can function under very low pH and elevated temperature. From the largediversity of classified enzymes, homology searches will be used to identify xylanases and othercellulases, proteases and oxidative enzymes. In phase 3, the student will perform enzymecharacterisation and develop information on process-production performance to a pre-industrialscale-up. By definition, all identified enzymes must function at high temperature and very low pH.Thus these will be the most heat- and acid-resistant enzymes ever isolated from a eukaryote,given that Galdieria lives at the absolute limits of eukaryotic life.