Discovering new enzymes using genome-enabled technolgy

The advent of new technologies such as next generation sequencing and multiple-omics analysis has provided an unprecedented amount of sequencing data. This has led to the construction of large databases. One such database, the Carbohydrate Active enZymes Database (CAZy) (www.cazy.org), is a publicly available resource, which currently (Feb 2015) includes 462,073 sequences from 3819 different organisms. While protein function annotation of whole genome sequences is available, most assignments are based solely on computational prediction and often found to be inaccurate. Thus, new strategies and technologies need to be developed in order to understand the actual function of enzymes.

In my laboratory, we utilize different protein expression methods to assign function to enzymes. In close collaboration with scientists from the Department of Energy-Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), and Joint Genome Institute (JGI) we will foster the development of novel methods to analyze enzyme function in a high-throughput manner.

REFERENCES

Deng et al., Rapid kinetic characterization of glycosyl hydrolases based on oxime derivatization and nanostructure-initiator mass spectrometry (NIMS). ACS Chem Biol. 9:1470-1479, 2014

Chandrsen et al., A universal flow cytometry assay for screening carbohydrate-active enzymes using glycan microspheres. Chem Comm. 49:5441-5443, 2013

Takasuka et al., Cell-free translation of biofuels enzymes. Methods Mol. Biol., 1118: 71-95, 2013