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Sweet Success: Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Way to Catalyze More Sugars from Biomass
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/04/07/sweet-success/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Sweet Success:[/font]
[font size=4]Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Way to Catalyze More Sugars from Biomass[/font]
April 07, 2013
[font size=3]Catalysis may initiate almost all modern industrial manufacturing processes, but catalytic activity on solid surfaces is poorly understood. This is especially true for the cellulase enzymes used to release fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) through support from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have literally shed new light on cellulase catalysis.
…
Working with cotton – a well-defined cellulosic material – as their model system, the researchers applied PALM imaging in combination with a mathematical analysis they devised. Their results showed that cellulases exhibit specificities for cellulose structures that have many different levels of organization, ranging from the highly ordered to the highly disordered. They also developed a metric to show that combinations of cellulases designed to bind to cellulose structural organizations that are similar but not identical can generate valuable synergistic activity.
“We found that the specificity of a cellulase for a particular level of cellulose organization influences its ability to catalyze cellulose hydrolysis alongside other cellulases with different specificities,” says Clark. “In particular, cellulases that bind within similar, but non-identical organizations have synergistic activity that could not be predicted from the more classical crystalline-or-amorphous cellulose classification system.”
The new PALM-based technique should allow enzyme cocktails to be optimally matched to the structural organizations of particular biomass substrates, such as grass or wood, so that all potential avenues of enzyme synergy can be exploited. This will increase saccharification efficiencies, which in turn will help reduce biofuel production costs. The technique also has applications beyond biofuels.
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Way to Catalyze More Sugars from Biomass[/font]
April 07, 2013
[font size=3]Catalysis may initiate almost all modern industrial manufacturing processes, but catalytic activity on solid surfaces is poorly understood. This is especially true for the cellulase enzymes used to release fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) through support from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have literally shed new light on cellulase catalysis.
…
Working with cotton – a well-defined cellulosic material – as their model system, the researchers applied PALM imaging in combination with a mathematical analysis they devised. Their results showed that cellulases exhibit specificities for cellulose structures that have many different levels of organization, ranging from the highly ordered to the highly disordered. They also developed a metric to show that combinations of cellulases designed to bind to cellulose structural organizations that are similar but not identical can generate valuable synergistic activity.
“We found that the specificity of a cellulase for a particular level of cellulose organization influences its ability to catalyze cellulose hydrolysis alongside other cellulases with different specificities,” says Clark. “In particular, cellulases that bind within similar, but non-identical organizations have synergistic activity that could not be predicted from the more classical crystalline-or-amorphous cellulose classification system.”
The new PALM-based technique should allow enzyme cocktails to be optimally matched to the structural organizations of particular biomass substrates, such as grass or wood, so that all potential avenues of enzyme synergy can be exploited. This will increase saccharification efficiencies, which in turn will help reduce biofuel production costs. The technique also has applications beyond biofuels.
…[/font][/font]
