Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The use of biofuels as renewable alternatives to oil has ignited the interest of government, the public and scientists. One of the most promising sources of such biofuels is the complex of sugars that are locked in the stems and stalks and leaves of plant material in the form of the glucose polymer cellulose. Ever-increasing efforts are being put into the development of environmentally friendly ways of degrading the cellulose component of biomass sources such as wood chips, wheat straw and waste paper into glucose, which can then be fermented to ethanol in traditional ways. This enzymatic degradation process is hindered by the very real fact that plant cell walls are complex, thus a mixture of enzymes is needed to carry out this process efficiently. Further different mixes are needed for different sources of biomass. Considerable effort is thus expended in devising ""cocktails"" of enzymes that are optimal for this purpose - either ""in vitro"" or ""in vivo"" with recombinant organisms. Another problem is that degradation efficiency often drops substantially during conversion - but it is difficult to know if all enzyme activites are being lost or, more likely, a single rate-limiting enzyme. Tools are needed to monitor these enzymes. We have developed a limited set of specific 'tags' to selectively ""colour code"" or ""mass tag"" a subset of the enzymes involved in biomass degradation and have shown that these can be used to quickly identify the amount and type of such enzymes produced by micro-organisms that are degrading biomass. In this project we shall synthesise a full set of such colour-coded tags to allow rapid, simultaneous analysis of the full set of enzymes present in complex mixtures of enzymes used in biomass-converting reactors. Such reagents will allow the rapid monitoring of biomass-degrading systems so that enzyme compositions can be optimised during the process. They will also be useful for the profiling of biomass-degrading enzymes in the natural environment in a search for useful new enzyme combinations, for applications to bioenergy and to other processes requiring enzymatic conversions. These include the pulp and paper, food processing and textiles.