O-18 セルロース系バイオマス糖化に資する新規酵素の探索と機能改変

抄録

We are working on screening and improvement of useful enzymes for cellulosic biomass saccharification. Although environmental microorganisms can be used to produce various glycoside hydrolases for the commercial degradation of lignocellulosic biomass, more than 99% of environmental microorganisms are difficult to culture and have not been fully characterized. This limitation can be overcome to a large extent by metagenomics, which is the culture-independent genomic analysis of microorganisms. In this study, a metagenomic approach was used to identify a gene that encodes an enzyme with efficient cellulosis saccharification activity. In addition, we also tried to improve the enzymes by rational design based on structural information and the directed evolution technique.