Valorization of Biomasses from Energy Crops for the Discovery of Novel Thermophilic Glycoside Hydrolases through Metagenomic Analysis

oleh: Roberta Iacono, Andrea Strazzulli, Rosa Giglio, Federica Bitetti, Beatrice Cobucci-Ponzano, Marco Moracci

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2022-09-01

Deskripsi

The increasing interest for environmentally friendly technologies is driving the transition from fossil-based economy to bioeconomy. A key enabler for circular bioeconomy is to valorize renewable biomasses as feedstock to extract high value-added chemicals. Within this transition the discovery and the use of robust biocatalysts to replace toxic chemical catalysts play a significant role as technology drivers. To meet both the demands, we performed microbial enrichments on two energy crops, used as low-cost feed for extremophilic consortia. A culture-dependent approach coupled to metagenomic analysis led to the discovery of more than 300 glycoside hydrolases and to characterize a new <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mi>α</mi></semantics></math></inline-formula>-glucosidase from an unknown hyperthermophilic archaeon. Aglu1 demonstrated to be the most active archaeal GH31 on 4Np-α-Glc and it showed unexpected specificity vs. kojibiose, revealing to be a promising candidate for biotechnological applications such as the liquefaction/saccharification of starch.