Biocatalytic Activation of Macromolecular Building Blocks

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Greater use of all bioresource fractions will be critical to an invigorated forest sector that plays a central role in Canada's growing bioeconomy and national commitments to reduced carbon emissions. Moreover, seizing this opportunity will realize Canada's potential to supply global bioproduct markets while capitalizing on its historical investment in infrastructure and know-how in bioresource use and management. ***In addition to innovative use of renewable biomass feedstocks, bio-economies are exemplified by increased application of sustainable, biologically catalyzed processes. Indeed, the importance of microbial enzymes to expanding the range of products that can be made from plant-derived biomass is well recognized. However, biotechnologies to date largely focus on the deconstruction of the bioresource for microbial fermentation or chemical conversion to commodity fuels and chemicals. While products derived from primary sugars and monolignols will be necessary for capturing the full potential of renewable plant biomass, these products relinquish the inherent functional attributes to the starting biomass resource. ***The potential of biocatalysts to upgrade (rather than degrade) biopolymer chemistries presents an alternative to the practice of “deconstruct to reconstruct” which dominates current biorefinery concepts. Accordingly, rather than target enzymes for lignocellulose deconstruction, the proposed program will focus on the discovery and application of enzyme systems that activate underused hemicellulose fragments, permitting their reassembly into biopolymer structures that capture the innate function of this major biomass fraction, leading to bio-based crosslinkers, surface coatings, and rheology modifiers. The emphasis on biocatalytic routes to activated building blocks will help ensure that both end-products and synthesis pathways are sustainable, while also harnessing the catalytic precision offered by a biocatalytic approach. The following four integrated steps will be followed to achieve the program goals: 1) bioinformatics analyses to prioritize carbohydrate oxidase and transaminase selections and inform protein engineering strategies; 2) production of protein targets using high-throughput and recombinant approaches; 3) biochemical characterization of isolated enzymes and reaction products to identify complementary and compatible enzyme systems, and 4) application of established coupling pathways to demonstrate the potential to re-assemble the enzymatically activated oligomers. In addition to accelerating the application of genomics research in the bioproducts sector, the proposed research will advance emerging trends in cell-free biocatalytic cascades, and create new tools to facilitate the design and development of novel bio-based materials from underused biomass fractions.