Biocatalyst metagenome approach

Recent advances in recombinant DNA technology, high-throughput technologies, genomics and proteomics, have fuelled the development of new biocatalysts and biocatalytic processes. In particular, site directed mutagenesis, directed evolution or metagenome approach are very valuable tools to enhance lipase properties. 

Despite the promising performance of newly studied enzymes in the laboratory, their application in the industrial milieu might fail due to their lack of robustness. However, as anaerobic, extremophilic, and marine bacteria might be a source of enzymes with superior chances of success in biotechnological processes, a great deal of laboratory effort has been concentrated on their production and characterization. Furthermore, the design of novel enzymes as well as molecular approaches such as enzyme evolution and metagenomic approaches can be used to identify and develop novel biocatalysts from uncultured bacteria—a treasure of unknown proteins. 

In a similar way, we have succeeded in isolating analogous genes of PAR from soil metagenome. The details have not yet been published, but the data suggests that this approach would possess a great potential to find and engineer useful ADHs as biocatalysts. 

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