Sugar-active metalloenzymes as novel motif in synthetic biocatalysis

Nature provides ingenious designs to perform chemical reactions in an elegant and efficient fashion. The natural tools - enzymes - are structurally intriguing miniature machineries that catalyze particular transformations with selectivities that are rarely met by man-made chemistries. As bio-based systems, enzymes are environmentally benign and since they can be produced from organisms such as bacteria, fungi or plants, they are fully renewable. Unfortunately, until today, we have not yet found a way to use biocatalysis as a general tool in the preparation of chemicals, mainly because the number of possible reactions found in Nature is limited. The SweetCu project will explore the potential and mechanisms of sugar-degrading copper-enzymes, so-called lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases, as new platform to replace traditional approaches based on heavy metals. Thus, SweetCu combines chemical research with life science technologies to create solutions for more sustainable value chains