RESEARCH TOPICS FOR XXXVIII CYCLE – Selection procedure for one position with grant on the specific topic “Production of new lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases with enhanced activity for food and agricultural waste valorization”
Title of the Research Topic: Production of new lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases with enhanced activity for food and agricultural waste valorization
1 (one) position with grant funded by Department of Life Sciences - UNIMORE
Scientific Tutor: Prof. Marco Sola - co-Tutor: Dr. Giulia Di Rocco
Research topic:
The long-term goal of the project is the development of a platform of new discovered metal-dependent oxidative enzymes, lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) for the conversion of recalcitrant substrates from marine or agricultural waste biomass into high value products or energy. The biomass made up of seafood waste materials, such as crustacean shells, fish bones and scales, is rich in the polysaccharide chitin, which can be depolymerized by lytic LPMOs to chitooligosaccharides (COS) and N-acetyl glucosamine (GlcNAc). These chemicals ca be employed in pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetics, food, and agriculture industries due to their wide range of biological activities, which include antimicrobial, antitumor, antioxidant, anticoagulant, wound healing, immunoregulatory, and hypocholesterolemic effects.
Agricultural wastes are in general processed by lignocellulose degrading microbes for producing value-added products, but the bioconversion of crystalline cellulose and lignin into simple molecules is still a challenging task. To this end, the LPMOs represent a new class of enzymes that in combination with other glycolytic enzymes are found very efficient. To end up with the final goal, the project has identified the following fundamental objectives: i) production of recombinant LPMOs; ii) characterization, at a molecular level, of the substrate binding to the protein active site; iii) optimization of engineered enzymes in terms of stability and functionality under different working conditions. Optimization will be performed through protein expression and physicochemical and biochemical measurements exploiting a plethora of experimental techniques such as spectroscopy (UV-vis, ATR-FTIR), spectrometry, chromatography (FPLC, HPLC) and electrochemistry. The project constitutes a fundamental and applied research on a concerted enzymatic degradative approach to convert waste in high value products, an issue with great implications and impact on the sustainability of the world’s demand.