The power of combining Verenium's natural discovery with DirectEvolution® technologies is demonstrated in the development of Fuelzyme™-LF, a novel alpha amylase enzyme for the cost-effective production of ethanol from corn.
The genes that were used for development of the Fuelzyme™-LF product were recovered from a black smoker sample collected at a deep-sea hydrothermal vent by the submersible Alvin. Hydrothermal vent chimneys are known to be colonized by hyperthermophilic Archaea that can grow at temperatures exceeding 110°C. The process of starch liquefaction for ethanol production occurs at temperatures of 105°C and a pH of 4.5 and thus is similar to conditions in and around hydrothermal vents. Through a combination of sequence-based and functional screening, three amylase candidate enzymes were selected, each of which exhibited one of the optimal characteristics for the performance specification: optimal activity at pH 4.5, optimal thermal stability at 105°C, and optimal expression in the selected production host. The three genes encoding the candidate enzymes were combined using Verenium’s DirectEvolution® platform, and a variant that possessed the optimal characteristics of all three parental genes was selected for product development. The resulting super alpha amylase, known asFuelzyme™-LF, outperforms competitive enzymes and is currently marketed by Verenium for use in starch liquefaction for the production of ethanol.
Read the scientific publication (PDF, 691K) on the discovery and optimization of this novel alpha-amylase enzyme.
