Discovery, characterization, and application of carbohydrate-active enzymes from diverse biological niches

复合碳水化合物的酶促合成和降解可以说是自然界中最重要的生物催化过程之一：植物和藻类细胞壁，主要由多糖组成，构成了全球碳循环中的巨大水库（约100万美元）。2000千兆吨），陆地净初级生产每年贡献30-60千兆吨生物量。碳水化合物活性酶及其同源底物也是多种医学重要过程的核心，包括糖生物学识别事件、内源性糖蛋白和脂质周转以及微生物感染。多糖降解酶对人类和动物的营养至关重要，本研究计划的愿景是提供对负责生物质多糖组装、重排和降解的碳水化合物活性酶的结构-功能关系的基本见解。基因组，元基因组，植物，腐殖微生物和互惠细菌的蛋白质组将使用最先进的生物信息学和新的化学探针来挖掘，以确定详细的酶学特征，包括协同酶的结构-功能分析和功能基因组学的新目标。该计划将阐明碳水化合物活性酶系统的生物作用，提供前瞻性的HQP培训，并告知与加拿大现有和新兴产业直接相关的后续白色生物技术应用。

The enzymatic synthesis and degradation of complex carbohydrates arguably ranks as one of the most important biocatalytic processes in Nature: Plant and algal cell walls, which are predominantly comprised of polysaccharides, constitute an enormous reservoir in the global carbon cycle (ca. 2000 gigatonnes), with terrestrial net primary production contributing 30-60 gigatonnes of biomass annually. Carbohydrate-active enzymes and their cognate substrates are also central to diverse processes of medical importance, including glycobiological recognition events, endogenous glyco-protein and -lipid turnover, and microbial infection. Not least, polysaccharide-degrading enzyme are essential to the nutrition of both humans and those animals on which we depend for sustenance.The vision of this research program is to provide fundamental insight into structure-function relationships of carbohydrate-active enzymes responsible for the assembly, rearrangement, and degradation of biomass polysaccharides. Genomes, meta-genomes, and proteomes of plants, saprophytic microorganisms, and mutualistic bacteria will be mined using state-of-the-art bioinformatics and new chemical probes to identify novel targets for detailed enzymological characterisation, including collaborative enzyme structure-function analysis and functional genomics. This program will illuminate the biological roles of carbohydrate-active enzyme systems, provide forward-looking HQP training, and inform subsequent white biotechnological applications of direct relevance to established and emerging Canadian industries.