The virtual enzyme lab: boosting advanced biofuels

One of the greatest challenges for our society is transforming our transport sector from fossil fuel to renewable alternatives. Biofuel is among the advancing technologies but to be competitive, production cannot (as today) rely on feedstocks from edible crops (e.g. sugar or corn).

Unfortunately, introduction of biofuel from non-food-based biomass has been slow and its utilization is below 1%. Yet, estimates say that increasing this utilization degree can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60%. [1] In 2010, proteins discovered in fungi and certain bacteria completely changed our understanding of
nature’s mechanism to break down biomass [2,3] . These so-called lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) use a copper reaction center to accelerate breakdown of the otherwise highly stable cellulose, which is a major component of biomass. Unfortunately, LPMOs are notoriously unstable under usual processing conditions for biofuel production, likely due to oxidative self-destruction. [4] The mechanism behind this self-destruction is unknown. In fact, even the mechanism behind LPMOs’ reactivity against cellulose is unknown.

[1] http://europarl.europa.eu. Accessed: 2019-02-12.
[2] G. Vaaje-Kolstad et al. Science, 330:219–222, 2010.
[3] P. V. Harris et al. Biochemistry, 49:3305–3316, 2010.
[4] J. S. M. Loose et al. Biochemistry, 57:4114–4124, 2018.