Enzyme discovery, mechanistic understanding at atomic level and rational design

Enzymes are vital components in the production of Biorenewables from biomass depolymerization to conversion into added-value products and biofuels. Enzyme cocktails are instrumental to break down lignocellulose into advanced sugars and lignin that will be further fermented by engineered microbial platforms. A notable effort in the development of industrial strains encompasses metabolic pathways, which are essentially a set of serial enzymes biochemically correlated to generate highly pure and complex molecules.

LNBR has established key approaches to discovery, understand and redesign enzymes. The discovery is based on omics analyses including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. This implies in a complete understanding of functional properties and structural dissection including conformational itineraries of catalytic reactions and structural determinants for mode of cleavage and substrate specificity. The redesign relies heavily on the mechanistic elucidation enabling rational and structure-guided strategies. Ultimately, LNBR aims to create new enzymatic functions that are not present in Nature to leverage the generation of novel classes of industrial relevance.