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Research conducted by the University of Queensland and recreating 450 million year old enzymes has resulted in a "hack" of biochemical engineering that could lead to new drugs, flavors, fragrances and biofuels .
Professor Elizabeth Gillam of the UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said the study had shown that old enzymes could survive at high temperatures, which would create products cheaply and on a large scale.
"We have looked at how we could use a biological agent, such as enzymes, to accelerate chemical reactions as an alternative to current commercial processes," said Professor Gillam.
"It is often very difficult to make precise changes to complex chemicals, but it is essential in many sectors, with the pharmaceutical industry being a good example.
"These methods often attack multiple sites on a chemical, so we end up with a mix of byproducts, often requiring a lot of energy and generating harmful waste."
The team discovered more efficient enzymes at higher temperatures that could be better, faster and cheaper catalysts, using less energy and avoiding toxic chemicals.
"Natural enzymes do not survive long enough to make this alternative competitive – so we imagined a hack," said Professor Gillam.
"The ancestors of these pre-Cambrian enzymes were able to survive intense heat, while the temperature on the Earth was about 60 ° C.
"We have obtained all possible gene sequences for a particular set of ancient enzymes, elaborated their genetic evolutionary history and determined the most likely sequence of their common ancestor that would have existed in early vertebrate animals.
"Then we recreated this gene, introduced it into a bacterium and tested the properties of the enzyme that it was encoding."
The team discovered that the ancestral enzyme could cope with high temperatures and lasted about 100 times longer at room temperature.
"It means more profitability in a commercial process, but also improves environmental sustainability and expands our understanding and use of enzymes in synthetic biology.
"The scale of commercial applications is limited only by the imagination.
"For example, this discovery could advance areas such as gene therapy or help clean up polluted environments – there is a lot of work to be done."
(Source: University of Queensland)
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