Discovery and Exploitation of Novel Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenase Redox Partners.

植物含有大量的糖。糖很重要，因为它可以被微生物发酵成乙醇，乙醇可以用作燃料--一种我们正在耗尽的商品。使用来自植物的燃料的优点是，这创造了一个碳中和循环，其中燃料燃烧释放的二氧化碳在新作物生长期间被光合作用重新吸收。生物燃料已经在生产，但它们主要来自可以更好地用作食物来源的作物。因此，一个重大挑战是确保我们通过利用目前被浪费的植物不可食用部分中的大量糖来实现更可持续的解决方案。这些糖被锁定在称为多糖的结构中，多糖有效地充当植物骨架，赋予它们刚性。最丰富的多糖被称为纤维素，它已经广泛用于造纸和棉花工业，是木材的主要成分。纤维素中的糖都以高度有序的结构连接在一起，非常难以分解。接下来的挑战是找到一种有效的方法来分解纤维素以释放糖，以便它们可以用于生产生物乙醇。真菌和细菌已经进化了数百万年，可以在各种环境中生存。其中一些生物能够降解并以木材为生。为了做到这一点，他们生产蛋白质为基础的分子机器被称为酶。作为一名结构生物学家，我能够研究这些酶，并更全面地了解它们如何分解纤维素。最近在该过程中鉴定了一个新的酶家族，称为LPMO（溶解性多糖单加氧酶）。LPMO在提高生物燃料生产效率方面显示出巨大的前景，但我们对其功能的了解有限。氧气很容易从空气中获得，但电子需要从其他来源提供。在细菌中，这种电子源尚未被确定。这个奖学金的目的是表征一系列的酶是潜在的电子源LPMO。通过确定它们的三维结构和生物化学性质，我的目标是在分子水平上建立对这些不同酶之间相互作用的透彻理解。然后，将应用现代酶工程方法来制造更有效和新颖的酶，用于工业生物燃料生产。电子传输，以及这些过程支持的所谓氧化还原反应，对生物燃料领域以外的其他行业也很重要，因此该奖学金也提供了充分的机会来探索这些蛋白质的应用，以解决其他科学问题。在LPMO上广泛工作后，这项奖学金为我提供了一个绝佳的机会，可以分支到我自己的研究领域，回答该领域的一个基本问题，并扩展我对新科学方法的知识，以解决真实的世界问题。

Plants contain a vast amount of sugar. Sugar is important because it can be fermented by microorganisms into ethanol which can be used as a fuel - a commodity that we are running out of. The advantage of using fuels derived from plants is that this creates a carbon neutral cycle, where carbon dioxide released from fuel combustion is reabsorbed by photosynthesis during growth of new crops. Biofuels are already being produced, but they are largely derived from crops that could be better utilized as food sources. A significant challenge is, therefore, ensuring that we move towards a more sustainable solution by making use of the large amount of sugar that is found in the inedible parts of plants which currently goes to waste. These sugars are locked away in structures known as polysaccharides, which effectively act as the plants skeleton giving them rigidity. The most abundant polysaccharide is called cellulose, which is already utilized extensively in the paper and cotton industries, and is the main component of wood. The sugars in cellulose are all joined together in a highly ordered structure that is incredibly difficult to break down. The challenge then is to find an efficient means of deconstructing cellulose to release the sugars so that they can be used to generate bioethanol. Fungi and bacteria have evolved over millions of years to live in all sorts of environments. Some of these organisms are able to degrade and live off wood. In order to do this, they produce protein-based molecular machines known as enzymes. As a structural biologist I am able to study these enzymes and gain a fuller understanding of how they break down cellulose. Recently a new family of enzymes has been identified in this process known as LPMOs (lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases). LPMOs show great promise in enhancing the efficiency of biofuels production but our knowledge of how they function is limited.LPMOs require two things - oxygen and electrons. Oxygen is readily available from the air but electrons need to be supplied from some other source. In bacteria, this source of electrons has not yet been identified. The aim of this fellowship is to characterize a range of enzymes that are potential electron sources for LPMOs. By determining their three-dimensional structures and biochemical properties I aim to build up a thorough understanding of the interplay between these various enzymes at the molecular level. Modern enzyme engineering approaches will then be applied to make more efficient and novel enzymes for deployment in industry for biofuels production. Electron transport, and the so-called redox reactions which these processes support, are also of importance to other industries beyond the biofuels sector and so this fellowship also offers ample opportunities to explore the application of these proteins to solve other scientific problems. Having worked extensively on LPMOs this fellowship offers me the perfect opportunity to branch out into my own research area answering a fundamental question in the field and expanding my knowledge of new scientific approaches to tackle real world problems.