{"id":57871,"date":"2018-10-31T07:23:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T06:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=57871"},"modified":"2018-10-27T14:18:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T12:18:30","slug":"ancient-enzymes-the-catalysts-for-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/ancient-enzymes-the-catalysts-for-discoveries\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient enzymes the catalysts for discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ScienceUniversity of Queensland-led research recreating 450 million-year-old enzymes has resulted in a biochemical engineering \u2018hack\u2019 which could lead to new drugs, flavours, fragrances and biofuels.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor Elizabeth Gillam<\/a> from UQ\u2019s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences<\/a> said the study showed ancient enzymes could survive high temperatures and that this could help create chemicals cheaply and at scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked at how we could use a biological agent, like enzymes, to accelerate chemical reactions, as an alternative to current commercial processes,\u201d Professor Gillam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s often very difficult to make precise changes to complex chemicals, but this is essential in many industries, the pharmaceutical industry being a prime example.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese methods often attack multiple sites on a chemical, so one ends up with a mixture of by-products, while often requiring a lot of energy and creating harmful waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team found enzymes that were more effective at higher temperatures and could be better, quicker and cheaper catalysts, using less energy and avoiding toxic chemicals.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally occurring enzymes do not survive for long enough to make this alternative competitive – so we came up with a hack,\u201d Professor Gillam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese enzymes\u2019 pre-Cambrian-era-ancestors were able to survive great heat, when temperatures on Earth were around 60 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe obtained all the gene sequences we could for a particular set of ancient enzymes, worked out their genetic evolutionary history and determined the most likely sequence of their common ancestor that would have existed in the earliest vertebrate animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we recreated this gene, put it into a bacterium and tested the properties of the enzyme it encoded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Science
Image: (L-R) Professor Elizabeth Gillam and Jong-Min (Joseph) Baek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The team found the ancestral enzyme could deal with high temperatures and lasted about 100 times longer at ambient temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means more \u2018bang for your buck\u2019 in a commercial process, but also improves environmental sustainability, and widens our understanding and use of enzymes in synthetic biology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe breadth of commercial applications is only limited by the imagination.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, this discovery could advance fields like gene therapy or help remediate polluted environments \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study has been published in Nature Catalysis<\/a><\/em> (DOI: 10.1038\/s41929-018-0159-5).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contacts<\/h3>\n

Professor Elizabeth Gillam,
\nE-Mail: e.gillam@uq.edu.au<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Dominic Jarvis,
\nPhone: +61 413 334 924
\nE-Mail: dominic.jarvis@uq.edu.au<\/a>,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Queensland-led research recreating 450 million-year-old enzymes has resulted in a biochemical engineering \u2018hack\u2019 which could lead to new drugs, flavours, fragrances and biofuels. Professor Elizabeth Gillam from UQ\u2019s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said the study showed ancient enzymes could survive high temperatures and that this could help create chemicals cheaply and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12535,5840],"supplier":[1299],"class_list":["post-57871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-catalysts","tag-enzymes","supplier-university-of-queensland-australien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57871"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=57871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}