Speaker
Description
Polyurethane (PU) plastics are extermyl durable and hard to recycle by convential methods due to
crosslinked and branched molecular structure. Recent discoveries of enzyme that arget carbamate
(urethane) bond in the PU provide alternative way of PU recycling by means of biocatalytic degradation.
EnZync center has been established to discover, characterize and engineer novel enzymes for PU
degradation. So far we have discovered several enzymes by computational searches and experimental
ways. The critical steps to establish rational basis of protein engineering campaing is the understanding
of Plastic-enzyme interactions at molecular level. To pursue structural characterization of “PURases”
we have two different but complemantry methods to characteirze active site of PURases: i) Fragment
Based Active site Exploration (FASE) of PURases by using small molecule fragment libraries and
soluble PU analogs and ii) time-resolved serial crystallography by cryocapturing catalytic intermideate
(for slow-milisecond kinetics) and ambient temperature (fast-microsecond) crystallography. We have
completed FASE approaches for one of our patented enzymes and now we are strating to perform serial
crystallography approach with promising preliminary data.
Authors: Deniz Bicer, Laura Rotilio, Daniel Otzen & Jens Preben Morth
