Thursday, February 5, 2009

Enzyme torwards breakdown lingin in biomass hydrolysis

The traditional enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass is to hydrolyze pretreated biomass to release monomer sugars for further processing. A new different approach has been reported recently on the research at MSU: it focused the white-rot fungus that is often found on rotting wood and used for biopulping. The fungus contains the peroxidase enzyme that initiates lignin breakdown. After isolation from the fungus, the enzyme-producing gene was reproduced by introducing it into E. coli. The idea was to to isolate the gene, slice out the DNA and basically have the bacteria eat the lignin.

No comments: