Discover, design, deliver: Enzymes for industrial advantage
Dr Alexander Pelzer and Dr Simon Godehard of the BRAIN Biotech Group outline the process of developing customised enzymes for innovative industrial applications *
The cost of enzyme discovery and the licensing models operated by enzyme innovators have long been barriers to the widespread use of biocatalysis. Recent technical advances have driven a shift toward faster, more efficient processes, leading to lower investment costs and significantly more favourable terms for end users.
Enzymes are already being used very successfully in various industries, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food and feed. Their advantages include: high specificity, which minimises unwanted by-products; high efficiency, which accelerates production cycles; usability under mild conditions, which makes reactions more sustainable; and lower operating costs resulting from reduced energy consumption.
Due to these properties, there is a great demand for new and tailor-made enzymes. However, the enzymes required to catalyse a desired reaction are not always available. There are three recurring scenarios that complicate the use of enzymes:
• Restriction by third-party rights, requiring a different enzyme with similar functionality
• Performance is insufficient for application, requiring a better enzyme
• Catalysing a new reaction, requiring a novel enzyme
These limitations are an opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves from their competition by leveraging enzymes and securing them with IP to gain a competitive advantage.
To meet this demand, a variety of methods have been established that make enzyme development significantly faster and more efficient than just a few years ago, benefiting from technological breakthroughs, particularly low-cost DNA sequencing, improved bioinformatics and artificial intelligence( AI), and AlphaFold’ s groundbreaking enzyme structure predictions.
Nevertheless, discovery is only the first step in making enzymes available for application within a pipeline that encompasses production strains, fermentation, downstream processing( DSP), and manufacturing. This article will show how new enzymes can be developed in a targeted manner and how the process continues from there to the final product.
The discovery of novel enzymes is a key step to turn ideas and concepts into biocatalytic solutions. BRAIN
Biotech’ s MetXtra platform combines the power of nature’ s diversity, bioinformatics and AI in a seamless workflow. MetXtra consists of three modules:
• MetXtra database: A highly diverse, proprietary metagenomic database
• MetXtra design: AI-driven design of novel enzymes
• MetXtra discover: Tailored bioinformatics- and AI-guided discovery workflows
MetXtra database: New enzymes from nature
Evolution has given rise to a wide variety of enzymes that can be exploited, but only a small proportion of the possible enzyme sequences are currently known. To leverage the untapped natural sequence space, we rationally select habitats, including
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