EUROPE’S METAGENOME · Probing Europe’s Undiscovered Genome: A Metagenomics Approach to Find Unique Enzymes for the Biofuel and Bioprocessing Industries

Our civilization is facing increasing pressures on finite natural resources, and Europe in particular faces serious challenges to its energy security. The purpose of the project is to explore Europe’s unique environments to discover novel enzymes which may support the development of viable bioenergy and other bioprocessing industries. Hydrogen has great potential as a future energy source. To make biological hydrogen production more favorable and competitive, more powerful hydrogenases needs to be discovered. Various kinds of enzymes such as lipases and cellulases are used as biocatalysts for a variety of bioprocessing industries; however there is still a strong need for new generations of these enzymes with more favorable characteristics such as stability to extremes of temperature, pressure, and pH. In this research, a metagenomics approach will be used to target the discovery of novel enzymes by exploring the world of unknown microorganisms in Europe. Finally, to fully achieve the goal of creating more powerful enzymes, directed evolution approaches will be applied. The anticipated result of this research is to discover highly effective hydrogenases, cellulases, and lipases. This project aims to provide tremendous environmental, economic, and strategic benefits and improve the quality of human life. The enzymes discovered may have a big influence and increase the competitiveness of Europe. The specific objectives of this research are to: (1) create metagenomic libraries using genomic DNA isolated directly from European water and soil samples (2) using activity based agar plate screening, discover novel hydrogenases, cellulases, and lipases (3) isolate and identify the sequences of the enzymes and clone novel ones into an expression host strain (4) explore their potential for application by evaluating their activities, substrate specificities, and stabilities at temperature and pH extremes (5) enhance the characters of isolated enzymes using directed evolution.