A research team has developed a new biodegradable material made using wood waste, reinforcing enzymes with the substrate that binds cellulase and helps to break down biomass.
Cracking the Code of Wood Decomposition
While wood is a naturally abundant and renewable resource, its complex structure has stymied other efforts to clear it for bulk materials processing by biochemical engineers. The potential of these raw materials is locked behind wood, which consists largely of more complex parts than starch in the form of lignin and hemicellulose, molecules that help to give trees their strength. isEnabled are able to break down this complexity thanks to enzymes produced by fungi.
Working in partnership with researchers at Kobe University to study these fungal enzymes, the new study’s co-first author Koh Sangho said the team is a step closer. The researchers characterized a substrate that mimics the enzyme’s natural, in vivo substrate. This innovation enabled them to watch the enzyme function in an environment that is almost unstressed, giving key data on how quick the reaction can be catalyzed and how firmly it binds to its substrate – imperative parameters for industrial usage.
The Breakthrough Substrate
Efforts to examine this enzyme in the past were hindered by the absence of an adequate assay substrate. Readers may find it surprising to hear that not even in his days as a graduate student could Koh generate the classic reaction dynamics curve with the well-established substrates. So, he contacted the scientist who had found the enzyme in the first place, asking if these niggling problems were normal for projects attempting to characterize this particular enzyme.
Koh and his team were able to redesign a new material with the enzyme’s essential structural attributes, combined in simple enough form that be chemically modified and computationally simulated, following years of dedicated labor. A second enzyme shown to be responsible for this activity and facilitating them the discovery of another enzyme, which allowed them to generate highly defined fragments of hemicellulose that could be chemically linked to create an ideal test substrate.
Importantly, this new substrate allowed the researchers to observe for the first time ever how the isolated enzyme worked in an environment nearly identical to what it experience within a microbe. Similarly, Koh called the emergence of textbook-like reaction dynamics a pivotal moment because it indicated that they could fully characterize the enzyme and begin to apply its protein structure for industrial purposes.
Conclusion
The new substrate is a major advancement in the long search for ways to turn wood into high-tech devices. The researchers have developed a useful tool for investigating the wood-decomposing enzyme under more natural setting, which has enabled them to understand how it can be improved and fine-tuned by biochemical engineers in an industrial context. The trace of this discovery allows us to bcu the door for utilization of fungal enzymes in their resources such as wood which is not just abundant but it can also be a renewable resource.
