PhD Defense: Ancestral sequence reconstruction for protein engineering: improving cellulases for biomass hydrolysis
CIC nanoGUNE Seminars
- Speaker
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CFM Auditorium
- When
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2017/11/10
12:00 - Place
- nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian
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Developing strategies to improve the catalytic efficiency of enzymes for
industrial applications is a long-standing goal in biotechnology. Although
several methods based on sequence alteration are currently in place, improving
enzymes in an effective and economically feasible manner is still a challenge.
Here, we propose Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction (ASR) as a viable method
for reconstructing enzymes with improved capabilities for biotechnological and
industrial applications. This technique reconstructs enzymes from extinct
organisms that lived in the harsh environments of ancient Earth, which are
akin to some industrial settings. Here we “resurrect†three ancestral
bacterial cellulases (endoglucanase, exoglucanase and beta-glucosidase) from
the late Archean eon (~2800 Myr ago). These enzymes are able to hydrolyze
cellulose with high efficiency in a broad range of temperature and pH
conditions as well as using different cellulosic substrates. The ancestral
cellulases show specific activity much higher than that of contemporary
commercial cellulases; they also show a remarkable synergy in combination with
other enzymes for lignocellulosic biomass degradation. Moreover, the
endoglucanase also shows higher activities upon its integration into a
bacterial cellulosome. Our results demonstrate ASR as a viable technique for
enzyme design.
**Supervisor** : R. Perez-Jimenez