The 40 Hottest Technologies of 2018 – as voting gets underway, the nominees in depth
Powerful new enzyme for transforming biomass
What does it do, how does it work, who is it aimed at?
Converting plant cellulose and hemicellulose into fermentable sugars is a major bottleneck in the biofuel industry. Chemical pretreatment and enzyme hydrolysis (breakdown) usually are required. To be effective, these biomass pretreatments must be paired with enzyme cocktails. As many as 18 different purified enzymes may be required for high yield conversion of biomass to biofuels. One approach is to swap out two or more single-function enzymes for a multifunctional enzyme. Researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded Bioenergy Research Center led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have engineered a multifunctional enzyme capable of hydrolyzing the three major materials of plant cell walls: cellulose, xylan, and mannan (CMX). Such a multifunctional enzyme could replace two or more enzymes in a conventional enzyme cocktail, while providing advantages in specific activity and stability of the cocktail.
Competitively, what gives this technology an edge?
Lignocelluloses contain numerous unusual linkages that are currently expensive to hydrolyze using specialized hydrolases. As many as 18 different purified enzymes may be required for high yield conversion of biomass to biofuels. Fewer enzymes would simplify biofuel production and lower costs. CMX enzymes could help to solve this problem with broad-specificity enzymes that target many types of linkages and have the potential to reduce the time, temperature, and inhibitory side products involved in biomass hydrolysis. CMX enzymes can replace two or more enzymes used in a conventional enzyme cocktail, and in some cases have enzymatic activities that are higher than with the native, single enzymes. The use of these enzymes can reduce the complexity of the deconstruction process by decreasing the number of ingredients and steps, leading to lower costs, better reliability, and more uniform results.
What stage of development is this technology at right now?
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