Biology Department Seminar

Cellulosic biomass contains a wealth of stored energy in the form of carbohydrate polymers, in particular, cellulose and hemicellulose. There exist industrial processes for breaking down the polymers to sugars which can be converted to ethanol by traditional methods, and other transportable fuels by other non-traditional methods. Unfortunately, the leading enzyme candidates for the conversion are very slow. Our efforts are focused on making these enzymes perform better in industrial reactors, mainly through mutations or other methods of structural or environmental adjustment. We model the enzymes, their subunits, and their complexes to gather structural, kinetic, mechanistic, and thermodynamic information about these systems. We have found that the understanding at the atomic and molecular level of mechanisms and thermodynamics leads us to predictions of mutations and conditions which will favor more economic production of sugars, and thus, fuels.