G.V. Schara, "Protein Engineering and Discovery of Novel Enzymes"

Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
FENS SEMINARS

Protein Engineering and Discovery of Novel Enzymes

Gönül Vardar Schara
University of Connecticut
Department of Chemical Engineering

 
 
Various kinds of enzymes are used as biocatalysts for industrial and commercial purposes. Often, wild type enzymes have undesired substrate specificities, insufficient activity, or poor stability for the competitive and cost-effective production of fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and agrochemical intermediates or for effective degradation of pollutants. In this respect, directed evolution has emerged as a powerful tool for improving these characteristics of enzymes. The number of biocatalytic processes that are being performed on a large scale is rapidly increasing, and it is projected that this growth will continue to become 30% of the chemical business by 2050.  As biocatalysis becomes easier, several chemical companies have begun to increase the biocatalytic processes significantly and a growing number of companies see biocatalysis as an interesting option. For example, one of the leading companies in biocatalysis, Novoenzymes, having an enzyme market value of 1.5 billion dollars in 2000, has biocatalytic applications than span from laundry to food production and bioremediation to animal feeding. Dr. Vardar Schara will talk about her research on the Protein Engineering of Hydrogenase, ToMO Hydroxylase and Cellulase enzymes that can be used to produce hydrogen, methanol and ethanol.

February 22, 2006, 13.40, FENS L056