Scientists engineer enzymes to break down toxic chemicals in industrial waste
Researchers have successfully redesigned natural enzymes to become far more effective at destroying harmful chlorinated compounds—a major step toward cleaner manufacturing and waste treatment. The technique could accelerate development of biological solutions for contaminated sites and chemical processing, potentially reducing reliance on costly physical removal methods.
Originaltitel: High-throughput selection of (new) enzymes: phage display-mediated isolation of alkyl halide hydrolases from a library of active-site mutated epoxide hydrolases
<p>Epoxide hydrolase StEH1, from potato, is similar in overall structural fold and catalytic mechanism to haloalkane dehalogenase DhlA from Xanthobacter autotrophicus. StEH1 displays low (promiscuous) hydrolytic activity with (2-chloro)- and (2-bromo)ethanebenzene producing 2-phenylethanol. To investigate possibilities to amplify these very low dehalogenase activities, StEH1 was subjected to targeted randomized mutagenesis at five active-site amino acid residues and the resulting protein library was challenged for reactivity towards a bait chloride substrate. Enzymes catalyzing the first half-reaction of a hydrolytic cycle were isolated following monovalent phage display of the mutated proteins. Several StEH1 derived enzymes were identified with enhanced dehalogenase activities.</p>