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

1896年，亨利·福特制造了他的第一辆汽车，他把它设计成以乙醇为燃料。在德国，鲁道夫·迪塞尔用花生油制造了这种发动机。然而，随着汽车的兴起，这些可再生生物燃料很快被石油取代。目前，能源价格高企、能源进口增加、对石油供应的担忧以及对化石燃料的环境后果的更多认识，推动了人们对生物燃料和生物质转化为能源的兴趣。目前，几种以酶为基础的可再生和清洁能源生产技术，如生物柴油、生物乙醇和生物氢，正在迅速兴起。今天，生物能源约占世界能源消耗的15%，其产量正在迅速增长。尽管生物催化具有明显的优势，但仍存在一些阻碍这些技术实施的主要障碍：生产成本高、产量低、酶活性和稳定性低，以及可用酶的种类非常有限。全球基因组和宏基因组测序工作发现了数百万个编码新型未知蛋白质的基因。它们代表了将生物质转化为能源的新酶的潜在丰富来源。该项目的主要目的是发现对生物柴油生产和植物生物量降解具有潜在重要性的新型微生物酶。我们计划应用我们的高通量酶筛选和结构蛋白质组学技术，以脂肪酶和酯酶为重点，鉴定和快速表征100种新型酶，了解这些酶的底物选择性和稳定性的分子基础，并最终选择几种酶用于未来的生物能源应用。

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.