Novel enzymes for conversion of biomass to energy: applied structural and functional proteomics of uncharacterized microbial hydrolases and oxidoreductases

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When Henry Ford built his first car in 1896, he designed it to run on ethanol. In Germany, Rudolph Diesel builthis engines to run on peanut oil. However, with the rise of the automobile these renewable biofuels werequickly replaced by petroleum. Presently, high energy prices, increased energy imports, concerns aboutpetroleum supplies, and greater recognition of the environmental consequences of fossil fuels have driveninterest in biofuels and conversion of biomass to energy. Nowadays, several enzyme-based technologies for theproduction of renewable and clean energy sources, such as biodiesel, bioethanol and biohydrogen, are rapidlyemerging. Today, bioenergy accounts for approximately 15% of the energy consumption of the world and itsproduction is quickly growing. Despite the obvious benefits of biocatalysis, there are several major hurdleshindering the implementation of these technologies: high production costs, low yields, low enzyme activity andstability, and very limited repertoire of available enzymes.Global genome and metagenome sequencing efforts uncovered millions of genes encoding novel, unknownproteins. They represent a potentially rich source of new enzymes for the conversion of biomass to energy. Themain aim of this project is to discover novel microbial enzymes of potential importance for biodieselproduction and degradation of plant biomass. We propose to apply our high-throughput technologies ofenzymatic screening and structural proteomics to identify and quickly characterize 100 novel enzymes with afocus on lipases and esterases, to understand the molecular basis of substrate selectivity and stability of theseenzymes, and eventually, to select several enzymes for future application in bioenergy.