Better enzymes for alternative energy sources

Lignocellulose is a plentiful waste product and its use in biofuel production does not interfere with the animal or human food chain. Current research is finding out the best enzymes to make bioethanol production as efficient as possible and elucidating the mechanisms behind the enzymatic hydrolysis.

The main component of waste materials from agriculture, forestry and wood-based industries, including straw, corn leaves and stalks as well as paper mill waste, is lignocellulose. Composed of carbohydrate polymers tightly bound to the tough material lignin, enzymatic breakdown and microbial fermentation of the carbohydrates can be used for production of bioethanol.

On the downside, however, lignocellulose is what makes woody material so indestructible and so difficult to decompose. The EU-funded project DISCO aimed to develop and test more efficient and cost-effective enzymes for breakdown of carbohydrates in lignocellulose for production of bioethanol.

To achieve this goal, DISCO researchers isolated naturally occurring enzymes from fungi and bacteria in soil samples,culture collections and metagenomic libraries. Altogether, almost 700 lignocellulytic strains were screened, yielding tens of interesting fungi for cellulose and hemicellulase activity. Genome mining from the fungus Myceliphthora thermophila resulted in nearly 20 novel cellulases and hemicellulases and multiple bacterial carbohydrate active enzymes were discovered from soil metagenomic libraries.

More details can be found at the following link: http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=OFFR_TM_EN&ACTION=D&RCN=11007