Bioengineered enzyme creates natural vanillin from plants in one step
利用生物工程酶一步式从植物中产生天然香兰素
- 关键词：
- 来源：
- Eurek Alert
- 类型：
- 前沿资讯
- 语种：
- 英语
- 原文发布日期：
- 2024-05-16
- 摘要：
- Professor Toshiki Furuya from the Department of Applied Biological Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, and his graduate students Shizuka Fujimaki and Satsuki Sakamoto, successfully developed an enzyme that generates vanillin from plant-derived ferulic acid. “Ferulic acid, the raw material, is a compound that can be obtained in abundance from agricultural waste such as rice bran and wheat bran. Vanillin is generated simply by mixing ferulic acid with the developed enzyme at room temperature. So, the established technology can provide a simple and environmentally friendly method for producing flavor compounds,” explains Prof. Furuya. Their study was published on May 10, 2024 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.The researchers used genetic engineering approaches to modify the molecular structure of an enzyme – ‘Ado.’ Ado is originally an oxidase enzyme that adds an oxygen atom to the substrate – isoeugenol. In its native state, it does not have the ability to convert ferulic acid into vanillin. Using structural modeling analysis, the researchers were able to predict amino acid changes in Ado which would enable its interaction with ferulic acid. On these lines, they conducted a series of experiments by replacing phenylalanine and valine amino acid residues at specific positions in the structure of Ado, with various other amino acids. They went on to examine the ferulic acid conversion ability of the various engineered mutant proteins.
- 所属专题：
- 173
