Self-Assembling Enzyme Materials and Enzyme Engineering for Flow Biocatalysis

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• Kersten Rabe, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• Thursday 05 December 2024, 12:00-01:00
• Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, LT 1.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Prof Ljiljana Fruk.

Applications employing catalysts in fluidic, cascaded setup are becoming industrially increasingly relevant. In order to also incorporate biocatalysts in such setups, efficient immobilization strategies are in demand. Employing the genetically encoded, covalent SpyTag/SpyCatcher (ST/SC) system, we have recently developed all-enzyme hydrogels, which can also be formulated into biocatalytic foams and be prepared from many enzymes, enabling the continuous conversion of a wide variety of substrates. In such carrier-free formulations the enzymes themselves form a material, which for example stabilizes the enzymes. These and other similar immobilization strategies result in biocatalytic flow reactors with continuous conversions for several days with high efficiency. As an alternative approach, biocatalysts can also be implemented in flow biocatalysis employing additive manufacturing. Such bioprinting applications call for thermotolerant organisms and proteins. We have recently showed reported how to employ guided protein evolution for engineering biocatalysts for such applications. In this context new methods using correlation analysis and machine learning have been developed which greatly aid the identification of thermostable enzymes. Using these approaches, we have successfully evolved enzyme variants that reveal significantly increased stability and activity at elevated temperatures, which can be utilizes for direct 3D printing for on demand production of reactor modules. Different enzyme classes have been successfully utilized including alcohol dehydrogenases, esterases, ketoisovalerate decarboxylases, phenolic acid decarboxylases and benzaldehyde lyases.

This talk is part of the CEB seminar series.

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• CEB seminar
• Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, LT 1

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